Training

At the third tier are common school languages such as Oshiwambo, Khoekhoegowab and Otjiherero. Of these, Oshiwambo and Otjiherero are Bantu languages and Khoekhoegowab is a Khoisan language. For these languages, the main objective is to conduct interviews with the speakers covering everyday topics, which will allow for comparison between the phonetic systems and vocabularies of the indigenous languages and English. These comparisons will be used to create targeted exercises for teaching English pronunciation in schools for each language. A more detailed acoustic and phonetic analysis of the school languages will also be carried out. The aim of the analysis is to identify the most problematic sounds for English perception and production by comparing the sound systems of the languages from the perspective of foreign language learning theories. The aim of the training is to make higher education in English accessible to more Namibians.