The Minister of Arts and Culture, Ms Lulu Xingwana invites media to the opening of the southern African regional conference of the Academy of African Languages (ACALAN). The conference will take place from 3 to 5 November 2009, in the Gauteng province. ACALAN is a specialised body of the African Union (AU) with five regions namely, western, northern, eastern, central and southern regions.
Driven by the need to develop vehicular cross-border African languages, the main objective of the conference is to launch the southern African regional language commission. In line with the AU's vision of regional development and integration, the initiative is aimed at promoting regional cultural integration.
The southern African region has identified and prioritised three cross-border languages for development namely, Setswana, Chinyanja and Chichewa. The language commission will, amongst other things, work out appropriate language orthographies to be used by cross-border speakers and standardise the languages in terms of grammar and terminologies.
The opening of the conference will take place as follows:
Date: Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Time: 19h00
Venue: The Lake Hotel and Conference Centre, No1 Country Lane, Lakefield, Benoni
Media enquiries and RSVPs:
Mpho Matjele
Cell: 072 218 5657
Issued by: Department of Arts and Culture
26 October 2009
