As part of a commitment to growing multilingualism and the development of indigenous languages – and to support more than 2.8 million learners* who take IsiZulu as a language subject at school – educational publishers Oxford University Press Southern Africa have published a brand-new IsiZulu-English dictionary.

Oxford is the publishing house synonymous with dictionaries, and has a strong local dictionary programme of monolingual, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries created on South African soil for South African learners, students and adults.

The Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: IsiZulu-English is the third in an award-winning range of up-to-date and easy-to-use bilingual school dictionaries for learners in Grades 4 to 9, providing support to IsiZulu children who are learning English, and English children who are learning IsiZulu.

“We at Oxford are proud to continue the dictionary publishing we are known and respected for around the world by expanding our reach into South African languages,” said Oxford Southern Africa Managing Director Lieze Kotzé.

“These dictionaries represent our commitment to enhancing cross-cultural understanding in South African classrooms, and assisting in the teaching of indigenous languages in schools. They give children words to learn with.

“In a country with a linguistic diversity spanning eleven official languages, it is essential that learners are able to access languages other than their mother tongue – at home, school and later on, in their careers,” Kotzé said.

“According to census information, IsiZulu is the most widely-spoken home language in South Africa – and that’s why we prioritized the development of this book.”

Said Oxford’s publishing manager for dictionaries, Megan Hall: “To our knowledge, the last substantial bilingual IsiZulu dictionary was published more than four decades ago. A great deal has changed since then – in the world around us, the language we use to talk about it, as well as in the way we now make dictionaries.

“Our IsiZulu-English dictionary was made following unique research into what teachers and learners value in a dictionary.

“As a result, it focuses on overcoming the most common difficulties amongst learners.

“It contains thousands of example sentences in both languages to help learners choose the right translation by showing how words are really used,” said Hall.

There is also unique curriculum vocabulary support enabling IsiZulu-speakers learning through English to understand their textbooks in other subjects better.

“Our dictionaries also contain a unique range of extra activities and study pages to allow learners to quiz themselves and develop the dictionary skills required by the school curriculum,” said Hall.

In addition to the activities included in the dictionary, a separate Workbook with games and activities is also available.

The Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: IsiZulu-English is available in paperback from leading bookshops at a recommended retail price of R104.95.

Oxford’s programme of dictionary publishing in South Africa has been underway since 1978.

It has produced one of the top-selling non-fiction titles in South Africa, the Oxford South African School Dictionary, as well as a popular reference dictionary for adults and school libraries, the Oxford South African Concise Dictionary. It has also seen the publication of the first series of bilingual dictionaries in all 11 official languages for Grade 2 to 4 learners, and so far, two other bilingual dictionaries for Grade 4 to 9 learners, in Afrikaans and English, and Northern Sotho and English – winners of an ATKV Word Wise Award and South African Translators’ Institute Award for Dictionaries respectively.

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* Extrapolated from the Department of Basic Education’s EMIS statistics for 2009