Some people do this. I've heard of school teachers teaching science in Sotho or Zulu that explain scientific terms in the local language. A car for example (tho

Some people do this. I've heard of school teachers teaching science in Sotho or Zulu that explain scientific terms in the local language. A car for example (though this is standard) is "sefatanaga" which literally refers to its action along the ground, whereas a motorcycle (again standard terminology) is "sethuthuthu" which is onomatopoeia. An attentive school teacher can extend this to things like a chemical reaction or perhaps a physical force. The only other point I would like to add is the actual internal variation that would complicate a scientific article. The dialect that is typical of my home area and the dialect that is taught at school have incompatible spelling due to pronunciation, but is verbally compatible with some amount of deliberation. An example would be "Ke tla go bona." (I'll see you [later]; correct spelling) That's actually pronounced "Ge dao bona" in the variation. There are not enough people interested to find a way to get around the standardisation issue and, in fact, whichever dialect becomes standard is inherently a form of discrimination. This is what has happened to the Sepedi dialect of Northern Sotho. It has become the politically correct term. I've heard many people introduce themselves as a Mopedi (a Pedi person) while I would later point out to them that they are from a different dialect, which they would immediately concede: they meant it as umbrella term. In their defense, there is a difference between linguists and between actual users of a language. I guess you could say Sepedi is colonising the other dialects, though without any violence as the term might insinuate. One reason might be that "Sesotho sa Leboa", which is the correct term for the language, Northern Sotho, is almost never used in verbal conversation. The term was almost certainly invented by linguists. The most common term would be "Sotho", but due to the confusion with Southern Sotho (a separate language) the default then instead becomes "Sepedi". It is reminiscent of "Castellano" vs. "Español".