TRANSLINGUALISM ACROSS LANGUAGES: A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGES INTERACTION

. The myth of a pure form of language is so deep-rooted in many people that, even though they accept the existence of different languages, they cannot accept the reality that there is no language that is fully independent of other languages. People believe that there is language contamination across languages and most of the time it is their own language contaminated by others. This confirms the colonial principle of compartmentalization or distribution of languages. Even in the post-colonial era, language isolation remains a serious challenge, especially in bi/multilingual classroom settings, where learners are discouraged to translanguage or code-mesh languages. It is against this background that this paper examines adaptation of several vocabularies and concepts from other languages in developing a language, usually through merging of cultures or colonization. This study looks at examples in Southern Africa and the Philippines of existing fusion that has taken place between those languages and other surrounding languages. Therefore, this study argues that boundaries between languages are fluid - not fixed. The boundaries do not exist. They are therefore uncalled for because they destabilize the fluidity between languages, yet there is autonomous fusion between languages. We further argue that indigenization of languages can work well in translanguaged classrooms where learners are allowed to utilize indigenized versions of loan words to express ideas and concepts. This can encourage a more liberal use of language and self-expression in formal classroom settings.


Introduction
The world has become a single global continent due to free movement that exists within and across countries. This, as a result, has influenced the linguistic boundaries that have been created within or between nations. A body of research has, therefore, questioned the existence of these boundaries that have been created between languages and argue that there is fluidity and flexible movement of languages (Wei, 2018). This means there is flexibility among languages used by people of different cultures and identities. The more people become in contact with other, the more there is cultural and language interactions (Hoffer, 2002), which will eventually give rise to new vocabularies and new cultures. This flexible movement between languages is regarded as translanguaging (Garcia, 2014). Translanguaging, therefore, implies an approach that allows natural interaction and overlap of languages "inclusive of all communication styles, registers, and repertoires that characterize multilingual communication" (Makalela, 2015, p. 202) to fit different contexts. However, there has always been a belief to some people that there is a linguistic purism (Baioud & Khuanuudt, 2022). This ideology is a deeply rooted belief/myth in some people that there is a pure form of language which has not borrowed words from other languages. In support with this view, Schneider (2007, p. 21) argues that "while some branches of linguistics, in particular historical linguistics in models like the family tree, have emphasized the purity and homogeneity of languages, the ubiquity of language contact in almost all cultures around the globe has recently been recognized and established, and language contact theory has come to be a growing sub-discipline of linguistics".
There are many people who, while accepting the existence of different languages, cannot accept the "contamination"/fusion of their language with others (Wei, 2018). This is brought up by the different interpretations that is given to a language as an entity that can be isolated or given a particular name and demarcated from others, not considering its functions and characteristics. Chomsky refers to language as "the inherent capability of the native speakers to understand and form grammatical sentences," and further considers "the sentence as the basis of language" (Chomsky, 2000). His definition portrays the structure of a language not what a language is. This shows how difficult it is to define a language and why people tend to look at the structures of the language more than what is meant to be (Winkler, 2015). On the other hand, Lyons (1981) perceives languages as being the system of communication among human being in a particular society or context in which they belong. These could involve people of the same or different language backgrounds. This definition highlights language as the system that is used by human beings for communication purposes, and it implies the contextual use of a language to fit different context. It confirms that language should not be looked from the lens of its structures but what people do with it (Makalela, 2015).
Researchers, in the 21st century, further describe language within the lens of translingualism, as a dynamic process (Garcia & Wei, 2014) and a non-linguistic means of communication, which involves interaction between human beings to express ideas/thoughts. For this study, translingualism is therefore viewed as a strategic practice of mixing different language varieties or registers (Gevers, 2018). This practice allows fluidity among different languages and encourages drawing from all the languages for the purpose of effective communication. Verbal communication, whether spoken or written, entails the ability to express concepts or ideas utilising the structure of a language. Some linguists argue that language is an ongoing process of languaging which "is shaped by people as they interact in specific social, cultural, and political contexts" (Mazak & Herbas-Donoso, 2015, p. 700). The descriptions given to language in the 21st century,' therefore, go beyond considering language as an isolated code but a process which is determined by the interaction among people, free from the linguistic boundaries that were originally created between nations, people, and also within nations there may be (perceived) boundaries.
From these explanations, it can be concluded that language is basically a dynamic process for making meaning (Wei, 2018) and a major tool for communication determined by the needs and social context in which it is used. These could be based on daily social communication, job related issues, social mobility, health, or education needs. All these may determine the choice and use of language which, in turn, will require understanding.
The choice and use of language are pivotal to people's definition of themselves in relation to the whole world. Consequently, language has forever been at the center of multiple contending social forces in the post-colonial Global South (wa Thiong'o, 1986). However, colonialism viewed language in a different perspective because language was then used by some nations as a tool of ascendance, and colonization to consolidate power and create governable, submissive subjects. During colonization, white minority governments have wielded language policy in education, business, and government as an instrument of political maneuvering, and this is key to the transformation agenda of former colonies in general and the Global South in particular. Thus, several post-colonial scholars are of the view that the colonial practice of imposing the former colonizers' languages onto their respective former colonies, even forbidding the use of the colonized people's native languages has serious ramifications on the people's true freedom and constitutionalism (Lovesey, 2012). Thus, in Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o sees language as the enabling condition of human consciousness, advancement, and freedom and thereby advocates for linguistic decolonization in the work and education spaces (wa Thiong'o, 1993) where language overlap is allowed and not compartmentalized.
In his pedagogical model of Critical Pedagogy, Paulo Freire whose work on language was hugely influenced by existentialism, held the experiential conviction that people ought to draw lessons from their past to determine their future and create human values (Freire, 2007). Based on this view, a reflection of the past shows that some communities within the Global South are multilingual characterized by complex and rich linguistic repertoires, which are very much intertwined. However, the coming of colonial rule witnessed dilution of local languages with those of the colonizers, which were regarded as prestigious and not to be "contaminated" with the local languages (Makalela, 2017). Makalela further argues that, in addition to diluting local languages, colonialism separated those local languages and isolated them into compartments that were believed to be completely disconnected from the idea of making those languages independent and exclusive. Thus, language was not considered as a process of communication which permeates across the so-named linguistic compartments (2017).
A language is a product of adoptions of words, vocabularies, concepts, and thought processes from other languages, usually through acculturation and colonization. For example, the English language is a product of many foreign vocabularies, loan words, word formations through combinations of affixes (Hellenic, Romance, and other language families) thereby creating words we now consider as English. A similar phenomenon is evident in other languages in the world, in colonized countries. For example, in those countries that were colonized by European countries, they adopted European languages' terms. The adopted vocabulary was modified to suit usage in their own culture/context, and nativized/indigenized them, embracing the borrowed term as their own. This nativization or indigenization is evident, for instance, in the change in spelling and pronunciation, although the meaning is similar to its original source. This indigenization of languages automatically works in a translingual environment where people utilize indigenized versions of words from other languages as tools for communication and self-expression.
Languages in various pre-colonised countries have been developed and used for communication purposes within and across people or countries regardless of the demarcations that were created. The development of vocabulary in these languages have been influenced by different factors such as colonial languages or languages from neighboring countries. This is normally seen from the phonological similarities in words that have evolved in those languages. It becomes difficult to imagine a particular language being independent without borrowing or using words from another language. Colonization is partly responsible for the emergence of new vocabulary in a language that evolved from the interactions between the native languages and the colonizers' language. In the same way, the interaction of different cultures resulted to the borrowing, adopting, and exchange of new words and vocabulary nuances. These processes have rendered languages as culturally inclusive, diverting from what could be its pure form. This paper, therefore, intends to identify translingualism that took place among neighboring languages. In analyzing this translingualism, the paper looks at adoption of several vocabularies and concepts among languages through colonization, borrowing and merging of cultures. The focus was on some languages in the Philippines, South Africa, and Zimbabwe as purposively selected examples of existing fusion of languages that has taken place between different languages or among surrounding language demarcated areas.

Origins and Influences of the Filipino Language
In the Philippines, Tagalog now known as Filipino, is the official language taught in schools and understood and spoken by more than 60 million people. The other language used as medium of instruction in schools is English. In 2012, the Department of Education implemented the Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy which mandates the use of "local mother tongues as the language of instruction in Kindergarten to year three (K -3), with the official languages, Filipino and English, being introduced as the language of instruction after grade three" (Assessment, Curriculum and Technology Research Centre,https://actrc.org/projects/understanding-best-practices-in-mtb-mle-in-the-philippines/). After the third grade, the Philippine learners are taught English and Filipino. Both languages become the medium of instruction up to the higher education levels. Like English, Filipino is recognized as the formal language for education and business in the country. "The origins of this language date back to more than 1,000 years ago. It is an Austronesian language belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subfamily, with outside influences from Malay and Chinese, and later from both Spanish and American English through several centuries of colonial rule" (Jelinek, Merialdo, Roukos & Strauss, 1991). They point out that the current form, structure, and most especially the vocabulary of this language is the result of the intermingling of several nations that resided in the Philippines. This shows that this language is not exclusive but built up of several languages. To further explain how the Filipino language came into existence, Panganiban (1952, p. 58) indicates that: The modernization of the Filipino language may be said to have begun during the time of the Spaniards, when Spanish friars engaged in missionary work in the islands supplanted the old Tagalog characters with the Roman letters presumably to facilitate their work of evangelization… Loan words, from the other Philippine dialects, from the Malay and Sanskrit, and from the Spanish and the English, have found their way into the Tagalog vocabulary either through the natural process of assimilation or through purposeful adoption. The Filipino language adopted words from other languages, such as Spanish, English, and Japanese, nations who have colonized and occupied the Philippines for many years, even centuries in the case of Spain. Colonization paved the way to the borrowing of words from the colonizers' vocabulary. This phenomenon of borrowing and adopting foreign vocabulary into the indigenous language such as Tagalog became a contributing factor to the development of the Filipino language. For instance, some Spanish words were integrated into the Filipino language with modifications in spelling and pronunciation. The same can be said with English and Japanese words.

Languages in South Africa
In South Africa, there are eleven official languages and several other non-official languages which were historically used by the people, not necessarily separated through their demarcated settlements in the country. It was only during the Apartheid era that those settlements were created to separate people in their different languages. History presents two factors in the separation of people according to their languages which led to people being placed according to their so named compartments of different languages. These two are the missionary linguists who put the languages into writing as early as the 1820s and the Apartheid policy of separate development legislated in the twentieth century (Makalela, 2015).
The rise of Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa in the year 1948 saw the missionary linguistic separation entrenched in tandem with the Apartheid government's adoption of a separate development ideology which ensured that Black Africans were separated into homeland reserves based on perceived language differences (Landsberg, Krüger, & Swart, 2011). This was broad about by the implementation of what was regarded as the 'separate development policy. This policy was meant "to divide Black South Africans along tribal lines in order to reduce their political power. The African (Bantu) groups were separated into homelands, or Bantustans, consigned there to become separate 'nations''(SAHO.2019). This perpetuated and ensured that South Africans who spoke different languages stay in separate quarters resulting in the legal division of the languages into ten homelands: Sepedi (Leboa), Xitsonga (GaZankulu), Venda (Republic of Venda), Setswana (Republic of Bophuthatswana), isiNdebele (KwaNdebele), isiZulu (Zululand), isiXhosa (Ciskei and Transkei), SiSwati (Kangwane), and Sesotho (QwaQwa) (Butler, Rotberg, & Adams, 1978). This complexity of several languages in South Africa resulted in having eleven official languages of which English and Afrikaans became the most dominant languages in official settings more than the other languages.
The separation of different languages served the interests of the colonists and the Apartheid era, and their understanding was that there will not be any interaction or mixing between the languages, possibly between the speakers of the languages. However, the vocabulary status quo in the different languages proves that there has been overlaps among the languages and there is more overlap of the English and Afrikaans languages on the indigenous languages as there is among the indigenous languages themselves. Despite the separation among the people, there are some words that remained the same or similar in the different indigenous language varieties and Afrikaans and English, which are normally used as medium of instructions in schools and official languages in the workplace. This implies that it is not only in the education sector where indigenous languages overlap with the colonial languages but even at the workspace. Wherever there is a need of communication among people in different languages' 'boundaries', there is always a diffusion between those languages. Schneider (2007, p. 23) points out that "the diffusion of these linguistic forms proceeds through ''imperfect replication,'' i.e. speakers potentially copy each other's' linguistic choices (if these are found to be communicatively successful); in so doing they reproduce, transmit, and at the same time continuously recreate and ''appropriate'' elements of a language variety. This replication operates not only vertically (i.e. with an offspring generation copying their parent generation's usage) but also horizontally (with speakers who interact with each other continuously influencing each other)". The more the people interact in their different languages and communicated with other, the more the overlap/diffusion emerged. This supports the argument that there are no created boundaries in languages as languages are what they are used for and not only the structures within them.
Among the eleven official languages, there are three languages which belong to the Sotho cluster. These are Southern Sotho (Sesotho), Western Sotho (Setswana) and Northern Sotho (Sepedi). "These languages were separated by the Apartheid government and codified by different missionaries despite their high degrees of mutual intelligibility" (Sefotho & Makalela, 2017, p. 42). Disconnected work among various missionary groups from different European countries resulted in the Roman Catholic missionaries working in the southern part of South Africa, the London missionaries in the west and the Lutherans in the north. These missionaries created different orthographic systems that were consequently conceived as representing three distinct Sotho languages namely Sepedi, known as Northern Sotho (by the German Lutheran missionaries), Setswana as the Western Sotho (by the London English missionaries) and Sesotho, normally referred to as Southern Sotho (by the Roman Catholic missionaries). However, the focus language for this study is purposively Sesotho in the Southern part of South Africa.

Languages in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe was colonized by Britain in the 1880s and became Southern Rhodesia. Other kingdoms that made up Southern Rhodesia include the Mapungubwe, Mutapa, Rozvi and the Ndebele kingdoms. The inhabitants spoke Shona and Ndebele, two of the many Bantu languages found in the region. The Bantu language family contains many langauges spoken by the Bantu peoples throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The coming of missionaries and colonizers saw the introduction of foreign languages in the country. Historically, a minority of white Zimbabweans spoke Afrikaans, Greek, Italian, Polish, English, and Portuguese, among other languages, while Gujarati and Hindi could be found among the country's Indian population. The country's local languages were not spared dilution by the colonizers' languages. This resulted in the establishment of several language varieties. Since the adoption of its 2013 Constitution, Zimbabwe has sixteen official languages and more than 20 minority languages. The official languages are Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Khoisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sign Language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa. The country's main languages are Shona, spoken by roughly 70% of the population, and Ndebele, spoken by roughly 20% (Charamba, 2020). Like most countries in the region, English is the country's lingua franca, used in government and business and as the main medium of instruction in institutions of education. It is not surprising that it has an influence on the vocabulary of some of the local languages.
The brief discussions showed the permeable and flexible movement and overlap of languages among people which most develop into new vocabularies in the languagestranslingual between languages. Translanguaging theory challenges the monoglossic language ideology and separation/boundaries among languages. When one looks at the term translanguaging, it is a combination of two words, 'trans' which means movement and 'languaging' which refers to language practices (Sefotho, 2019). This signifies the relationship between the language that is used and the social practices of the language users in using such a language or languages (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). The explanation indicates a flexible movement between languages which is determined by the way/ways language users employ linguistic practices for communication purposes in different contexts. Therefore, this study is underpinned by translanguaging theory which views language not as an isolated entity but a complex interrelated discursive practice, or a resource that is used by people for communication and that cannot be assigned to one or another traditional definition of a language (Wei, 2018). Language is no longer viewed as an isolated entity or separate codes that were historically structured according to different areas/ nations, but as part of language users' practices in effective communication in different contexts.
"Translanguaging theory advocates for a transglossic or dynamic processes of using languages and allowing integration between languages without any created boundaries to enhance understanding … and furthermore, building their conceptual and linguistic knowledge" (Garcia, 2009, p. 291). Translanguaging shows that the mingling and fusion between languages do not dilute what is named as a particular language, but it enriches one another with innovation and creativity of new vocabulary. Researchers argue that the use of more than one language is needed to give a complete meaning and one language is not enough (Creese & Blackledge, 2010;Makalela, 2015) and, therefore, question the idea of linguistic boundaries that were socially and politically created (Wei, 2018;Makalela, 2015). They also argue that the use of languages is fluid and cannot be separated into compartments. It is, therefore, a fact that the integration will involve invention of new terms or vocabulary that is understood by people using the language and this also allows fluid movement between the languages. This movement is what researchers refer to as translanguaging which accommodates the mingling of all linguistic resources that one has. It is a theory that advocates for interconnectivity and interdependence among languages and not language isolation (Kleyn & Garcia, 2019).
In addition, Mazak and Herbas-Donoso (2015) challenge the monoglossic ideology of languages being viewed as having boundaries and claim that languaging practices between languages are fluid, interconnected, and dynamic during the process of communication between the users. Thus, the set of practices used by people of different cultures and linguistic background result in invention of new vocabulary that reflects fluidity between languages and close integration of the languages, and this results in development of new borrowed or intermingled vocabulary in languages (Kim, 2015). The issue of language integration is supported by what Makalela (2019) emphasises when talking about the blurred boundaries between languages; he says languaging is what people do with the language not looking at what languages are. He points out that language is not an entity but a representation of the society.
The names that are given to what we refer to as languages are just "labels assigned by linguists to sets of structures that they have identified" (Wei, 2018, p. 19). As such, there is no speech community that can claim to own certain words, as those were formed by social and cultural practices in communication beyond the issue of boundaries among languages. Wei (2018) further indicates that, contact between people of different backgrounds and cultures allows language users to penetrate through their languages' codes and form new coordinated and meaningful structures that allow them to engage meaningfully in effective communication with the people they are in contact with. Furthermore, Schneider, (2017, p. 22) acknowledges the idea that "Language evolution, and the emergence of contact-induced varieties, can be regarded as speakers making selections from a pool of linguistic variants available to them in a contact setting. This ''feature pool'' consists of the sum total of the individual forms and variants that each of the speakers involved, with different language backgrounds and varying linguistic experiences, brings to the contact situation".
Innovation and creativity of new or socially constructed words evolve from the interaction between people in contact and for communication purposes. This is supported by language in contact framework which was originally proposed by Thomason (2001). She indicates that where there is contact among people, there is normally an indirect correlation between their extralinguistic causes and linguistic consequences (Schneider, 2007). People communicating with each other, eventually adopts each other's language and this results into a contact language (Wheeler, 2015), that is suitable and understood by the communities involved for ease of communication. Language in contact "is … the contact of one community with another, and the effect that contact has on their respective language behaviour" (Wheeler, 2015, p. 76). The translingual situation among languages is the confirmation of interdependency and a rejection of the purity of languages. This becomes an indication that the socially and politically defined boundaries (Otheguy et al., 2015) do not really make sense or meaning where people of different cultures mingle or get in contact with each other. This is reflected in different context in the world, globally.

Methodology
The study follows a qualitative research design, relying on textual analysis on the available literature through the influence of foreign languages on three named languages: Sotho, Shona and Filipino. Textual analysis is a methodology that involves understanding a language, respective symbols, and/or pictures present in the analyzed texts in order for one to gain information regarding how people communicate life and life experiences. It entails the rhetorical concepts that are used to analyze the features of given texts. Visual, written, or spoken messages provide cues to how the message may be understood among speakers (Hawkins, 2017). Often, the relayed messages are understood as influenced by and reflective of larger social structures. There are four major approaches to textual analysis: rhetorical criticism, content analysis, interaction analysis, and performance studies. To explore the sense-making phenomenon more fully under investigation, textual analysis and ethnography were combined in which use was made of observations and listening as respective speakers conversed, noting similarities in the languages.

"Tagalizing" Foreign Loan Words in the Philippines
The Philippines shares a colonial past with the Southern African countries. Three countries colonized and occupied the Philippines influencing its culture, including the development of its language. From 1565 to 1898, the country was a colony of Spain. The United States then came to colonize the country after it won the Spanish-American war in 1898. Masanga (2021) pointed out that "the main goal of the United States in the Philippines was to turn the country into a self-sufficient capitalistic democracy." This new colonizer, who controlled the country from 1898-1941, created infrastructure "that would improve the literacy and economy of the country. As a result, literacy doubled to about half by the 1930s and a fourth of the educated population could speak English. This was a massive influence for the Filipino culture, as English became the dominant language alongside the official Filipino language of Tagalog." Masanga (2021, p.3) further noted that "Once World War II hit, the plans for the Philippines to finally gain independence went downhill as Japan invaded the Philippines and took control. There isn't nearly as much cultural influence that the Japanese occupation had on the Philippines as Spain, or the United States had. This is because Japan did not offer any support to the Philippines during the short time they occupied the Philippines during the war, as these were times of conflict". The Filipino language incorporated Spanish loanwords as a result of almost half a century of contact with the Spanish colonizers and the language they speak. In their review of a Pilipino-English dictionary, Llamzon and Thorpe (1972) point out that 33% of word roots are of Spanish origin.
In a presentation during the 11th International Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics Conference, Baklanova (2019) shared her findings "that Spanish-derived words constitute 20% of the lexicon used" in Filipino. She gave an example in the sentence below in which Spanish-derived words are in italics (original in parentheses): Tagalog: "Puwede (Puede) ba akóng umupô sa silya (silla) sa tabi ng bintana (ventana) hábang nása biyahe (viaje) táyo sa eroplano (aeroplano)?" Translation in English: ("May I sit on the chair near the window during our voyage in the aeroplane?") She further pointed out that, "The adoption of the Abakada alphabet in 1940 changed the spelling of most of the Spanish loanwords present in the Filipino language. The loanwords derived from the Spanish language have their original spellings indigenized according to the rules of the Abakada alphabet." This is an indigenised Latin alphabet used by the Filipinos. Table 1 shows some loan words from the Spanish language. These are among the common words in the Filipino language: Aside from Spanish loan words, the Filipino language assimilated English vocabulary and adopted the words into the language, again using the Abakada alphabet. Because the United States made the development of the educational system a priority in the Philippines, the teaching and learning of the English became an important part of the new curriculum. Filipino became more enriched by the English vocabulary it adopted. Here are some examples: Aside from Spanish and English, the Filipino language also adopted words from Japanese. Despite the short period of its occupation in the Philippines, the Japanese have also influenced Philippine culture. One of these evident influences is the adoption of Japanese words in Filipino.  Source:http://filipiniana101.blogspot.com/2014/03/list-of-japanese-loan-words-in-tagalog.html. This nativisation/indigenisation of foreign vocabulary in Filipino is evident in the change in spelling and pronunciation, although the meaning is similar to its original source. Spanish, American English, and Japanese have enriched the Filipino language. Despite being the language of the colonizers, these languages have become nativized and indigenized, making them Filipino. The diffusion of languages is noticed in other parts of the world.
This study also discusses evolution of words in the Sesotho language in South Africa through linguistic diffusion with other languages based on people's interaction.

The Evolution of some words in the Sesotho Language -Lesotho/South Africa
As has been mentioned earlier, regardless of the separation of people in their respective languages, the need to communicate effectively remained an important aspect in peoples' lives. Separation of languages, therefore, was not an issue and people had to find means of communication through adoption of words from the different involved languages, of which we refer to as a 'translingual' approach. Translingual approach is a term that "perceives a synergy between languages which generates new grammars and meanings (Canagarajah, 2015:5). This resulted in diffusion between the languages for ease of understanding, communication and meaning making. The following are examples of words that were formed from the mingling of the Basotho people working in the farms or in the mines with Afrikaans speaking people. They are found in a corpus that we classify as "No-man's language", that is, neither Sesotho, Afrikaans, nor English words but words that show diffusion among languages; not necessarily forming a new language but mingling of all the languages for ease of communication and understanding.  Tafel  Table  Tapole Aartappel Potato Tonki Donkie Donkey Tsoekere Suiker sugar The above selection of words shows the similarities in the vocabulary of the words between, Afrikaans, English and Sesotho. This is due to the interaction that took place between people who were native speakers of the languages. The end results would be the invention of new vocabulary words deriving from these interactions or communication through borrowing. This linguistic fusion has not happened only in the South African region but even in other countries. Zimbabwe is one of such countries that was considered in this study and the focus was on the Shona language.

Features of the Shona language -Zimbabwe
African languages are classified into four major linguistic families or phyla, which are Afro-Asiatic, Nile Saharan, Niger-Congo and Khoisan. Historically, the Bantu languages are closely related and have a unique feature in the harmonic concord (Wentzel, 1981). While Indo-European languages usually show gender differences, number differences (singular or plural), and agreement by means of suffixes, Bantu languages use prefixes and the harmonic concord, for example the root word for a person is ntu (Wentzel, 1981). In Zimbabwe in general, language is constantly a dominant question in postcolonial studies and a lot of campaigns have been held with efforts to advocate for the promotion of a multilingual approach that promotes inclusivity of languages.
Most studies that deliberate on colonialism tend to concentrate on Europe's economic exploitation of Africa and its resources leaving out other aspects. It is crucial that when studying colonialism scholars zero in on aspects such as cultural and linguistic practices that were brought by the advent of colonialism. Colonialism in Zimbabwe gave birth to linguistic and cultural hierarchies. The language of the colonizer became the formal and official language of communication, thus it was used in all administrative purposes as well as medium of instruction ahead of indigenous languages (Charamba, 2019), and these are used for instructional purposes in the first and second grades only.
In these different indigenous languages, there is a high degree of similarity, including the grammar and structure, and a substantial sharing of root words, especially if one takes account of simple sound shifts. For example: Source: Wentzel, 1981. The history of the Venda starts from the Kingdom of Mapungubwe that stretched from the Soutpansberg in the south (South Africa), across the Limpopo River to the Matopos in the north (Zimbabwe). At a very early stage in the study of the Bantu language situation pointed towards an affinity of Venda with Shona as is clear from the examples given. Looking at examples in the table above, one can see the similarities between some of the words. For example, mutsvuku (Shona) and mutswuku (Venda); mbiri (Shona) and mbili (Venda); or rufu (Shona) and lufu (Venda). In some cases, though the orthographies differ, the phonetic sounds and meanings are the same. For example, tshikukwana (Venda) and chikukwana (Shona) referring to a chick. In Venda, for instance, a language owing much of its parentage to Shona, valorization in the case of bilabial consonants occurs.
Venda is spoken in the northern part of South Africa around Mesina whereas in Zimbabwe, it is common in the southern area of the Limpopo River where Shona is also dominant. To the north of the Limpopo where Venda is spoken, mainly in the Beitbridge district of Zimbabwe, there is also daily contact with Shona dialects. Evidently, Venda and Shona share linguistic features and there has been some influence on these languages from the Nguni languages.

Conclusions
Findings show that there is fluid fusion between languages especially from neighboring languages. Some words that have emerged from the selected languages show identities and origins from other languages and how those words became part of the new languages. This is an indication that there is no independent language, but one language is being built from other surrounding languages. Therefore, this paper argues that boundaries between languages are fluid, not fixed and they, actually, do not exist. This indigenization of language can work well in multilingual and multicultural communities, workplaces, and classrooms where multilinguals are allowed to utilize indigenized versions of loan words such as English words to express ideas and concepts. This will encourage a more liberal use of languages as tools for communication and self-expression in an otherwise formal settings such as classroom and communal settings.
In the Global South context, translingual practices have always been observed presenting a case for use of translingual communication that blurs boundaries between different languages (Charamba, 2020). The Global South with more than 1,500 languages is one of the most linguistically complex regions in the world. While many studies on multilingual and multicultural practices have critiqued monolingual bias in the Global South classrooms (Kiramba & Smith 2019), very few frameworks have been developed to account for ontological, epistemological, and methodological framing of these practices (Monteagudo & Muniain, 2019;Paquet & Levasseur, 2019). Through an analysis of Southern Africa's historical past, Makalela (2017) makes a case for Ubuntu ('I am because you are' and 'you are because I am') translanguaging as an alternative conceptual framework to understand the linguistic diversity of the Global South, and how it can be used as a pedagogic strategy to increase access to knowledge among multilingual and multicultural students. This translanguaging model based on Ubuntu principles shifts the gaze from language divisions to complex repertoires that are fluid in everyday meaning-making instructional and societal practices.

Recommendations
There is a need for more involvement and acceptance of what has traditionally been viewed as non-linguistic means and urges us to overcome the "lingua bias" of communication. Language should be used as a resource for communication. Educators should also accept the "contamination" among the languages and stop arguing about the ownership of a language. Institutions of education should consider developing multilingual and multicultural teaching resources and assessments in which students will be allowed to use their full linguistic repertoire in education as one language does not exist in isolation from the other, thus typifying the "ubuntuness" of languages (Makalela, 2017). The implementation of multilingual and multicultural pedagogy, however, requires language policies that clearly show how multilingualism will be promoted in their institutional environment and their teaching and learning programs (Mazak and Carroll, 2016), and this can then help us to envision the true decolonization of education.