In the Media

Langa Khumalo is a Professor and Executive Director of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) at North-West University (NWU). SADiLaR has a strategic function to stimulate and support research and development in the domains of human language technologies (HLT), natural language processing (NLP), language-related studies and digital humanities (DH). As an area of scholarly activity, DH lies at the intersection of computing or digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences.

‘My research interests are mainly in corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, DH and the morphosyntax of African languages. I am also interested in the development of digital resources for African languages, their intellectualisation for their improved use in all forms of technology and their contribution to the global knowledge economy,’ Langa explains.

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The Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) has appointed the executive director of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) at the North-West University (NWU) to serve on its advisory panel on the implementation of the language policy framework for public higher-education institutions.

Prof Langa Khumalo will be part of the panel for an initial period of three years. This period is linked to the implementation cycle of the framework. He says it will be the task of the advisory panel to compile and submit a report to the DHET on the achievement, challenges and lessons learnt during the implementation period. The work of the panel will start in November and the implementation cycle will begin in April 2024.

The advisory panel will oversee the implementation of the policy framework by all South African public higher-education institutions. The oversight entails ensuring that the implementation plans developed by the universities comply with the policy framework, other policies and legislative frameworks. Universities are required to submit language development plans that indicate how they plan to develop and strengthen historically marginalised South African languages.

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Providing support in English-medium institutions is one approach to improving student performance, but others have been proposed. According to Dr Langa Khumalo, introducing mother tongue or indigenous African languages at universities is a “constitutional imperative”.

Khumalo, who is linguistics director in the Language Planning and Development Office at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said: “The introduction of African languages at universities improves the quality and quantity of academic engagement. The students engage more actively in – read more

The awards were in recognition of the work UKZN has done in the promotion and development of official languages, in particular isiZulu. The book is a product of the University Language Board (ULB) literature competition that is an annual event hosted by the University Language Planning and Development Office. – read more