Corpora at NWU have mostly been developed in collaboration with various corpus suppliers, such as publishing houses, news websites, (literary) blog sites, libraries, etc. These corpora may be used for academic research purposes only. For commercial licencing options, please contact us directly.
These corpora are divided into two collections:
COCO@NWU hosts the corpora on two platforms:
A collection of government documents from the various websites and electronic publications of the South African government.
Department of Sports, Arts and Culture & CTexT. 2026. NCHLT- Afrikaanse Korpus 2.0 [NCHLT Afrikaans Corpus 2.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University. ISLRN: 544-932-849-161-3. Available at: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12185/293
A subset of the Leipzig Corpora Collection.
Subset contains Afrikaans texts up until 2023. © 2025 Abteilung Automatische Sprachverarbeitung, Universität Leipzig.
Goldhahn, D. Eckart, T. & Quasthoff, U. 2012. Building Large Monolingual Dictionaries at the Leipzig Corpora Collection: From 100 to 200 Languages. In: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12).
A collection of original plays submitted for the ATKV Youth Theatre Competition.
Collection covers competition entries from 2016 to 2022.
ATKV & CTexT. 2026. NWU/ATKV-Tienertoneelkorpus 2.0 [NWU/ATKV Theatre for Teenagers Corpus 2.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A collection of news articles and blogs as published on the media house Maroela Media's website.
Collection covers all material up to the end of August 2026.
Maroela Media & CTexT. 2026. NWU/Maroela Mediakorpus 3.1 [NWU/Maroela Media Corpus 3.1]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A corpus of Afrikaans books (mostly fiction) published by Lapa Publishers.
LAPA Uitgewers & CTexT. 2026. NWU/LAPA-Korpus 2.0 [NWU/LAPA Corpus 2.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A collection of articles published in the Taalgenoot magazine.
Collection covers all material from 2006 to 2025.
ATKV & CTexT. 2026. NWU/ATKV-Taalgenootkorpus 2.0 [NWU/ATKV Taalgenoot Corpus 2.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A corpus of Afrikaans books (fiction and non-fiction) published by the publisher Protea Boekhuis.
Protea Boekhuis & CTexT. 2026. NWU/Protea Boekhuiskorpus 3.0 [NWU/Protea Boekhuis Corpus 3.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A collection of news bulletins, as broadcast on Radio Sonder Grense and published on their website.
Collection covers all material from January 2005 to July 2026.
Radio Sonder Grense & CTexT. 2026. NWU/RSG-nuuskorpus 3.1 [NWU/RSG News Corpus 3.1]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A stratified corpus used by the Afrikaans Language Commission, consisting of a variety of genres and domains, including academic journals, newspapers, literary works, informal writings, etc.
Taalkommissie van die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. 2011. Taalkommissiekorpus 2.0 [Language Commission Corpus 2.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A collection of documents from the various web pages available on the Afrikaans version of Wikipedia.
Collection covers all material up to July 2026.
Wikipedia. 2026. Wikipedia Afrikaans Corpus 2.1. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula Afrikaans Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
Klyntji.com is an independent, online journal published in all variants of Afrikaans, focusing on diverse and progressive art and culture from the global South. The corpus covers material from 2014 to 2026.
Klyntji & CTexT. 2026. NWU/Klyntji Corpus 1.2. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
Vrye Weekblad was a progressive Afrikaans national weekly newspaper published from 1988 to 1994. It was relaunched as an online newspaper from 6 April 2019 to 28 March 2025. The corpus includes material from 2019 to 2025, but excludes user comments.
Vrye Weekblad & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Vrye Weekblad-korpus 1.1 [NWU/Vryeweekblad Corpus 1.1]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula English Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula Sesotho sa Leboa Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula Sesotho Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula Setswana Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula isiXhosa Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
The data included in the corpora presented here issue from Pula/Imvula, a South African magazine focusing on the developing farmer and published by Grain SA (https://www.grainsa.co.za/farmer-development). The main aim of the magazine is to support developing farmers in becoming sustainable commercial farmers. The magazine is distributed on a monthly basis and currently only available in English. However, from 2007 until September 2024 it was published in five languages (English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, and Setswana), and previously (2007-2019) also included Afrikaans and Sesotho sa Leboa (discontinued due to lack of funding).
Pula Imvula & CTexT. 2025. NWU/Pula Imvula isiZulu Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
A collection of news stories published by KZN Namuhla, a Community Newspaper that serves the Durban Metropolitan semi-urban and rural areas, Pietermaritzburg as well as the South and North of KZN. A few opinion pieces are also included.
Collection covers all material from October 2022 to July 2026.
KZN Namuhla & CTexT. 2026. NWU/KZN Namuhla News Corpus 1.0. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
Collection of unedited user comments on web pages, arranged in subcorpora per web page.
Current collection: Comments from two different websites (anonymous).
CTexT. 2026 . NWU Kommentaarkorpus 3.1 [NWU Comment Corpus 3.1]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
Collection of historical Afrikaans documents, arranged by subcorpus.
Current collection: VOC documents from 1662 to 1791, as digitized by the Tracing History Trust.
Tracing History Trust & CTexT. 2021 . NWU THT-korpus 1.4 [NWU THT corpus 1.4]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
Collection of informal blogs as published on watkykjy.co.za up to and including the end of February 2025.
WatKykJy & CTexT. 2026. NWU/WatKykJy-korpus 3.0 [NWU/WatKykJy Corpus 3.0]. Potchefstroom: CTexT, North-West University.
For both search platforms, all non-English corpora have been automatically processed, annotated, and (re)compiled using in-house tools developed by CTexT. The ctextcore Python package was used for sentence separation, tokenisation and POS annotation.
NOTE: The Leipzig corpus was created by combining all available Afrikaans Leipzig collections by year and type. Deduplication was performed at the paragraph level for each combined collection.
Note that Sentence separation and tokenisation counts might differ slightly between Afrikaans corpora that users have uploaded themselves on Sketch Engine, and those that have been uploaded by NWU on the Sketch Engine and COCO platforms. The main reason for this is that Sketch Engine and our in-house tools use slightly different definitions of what sentences and words are.
COCO@NWU. 2025. Corpus Cooperative at North-West University. Available at: http://coco.nwu.ac.za.
Choose between one or more of the following:
See the citation information under each of the tools mentioned above.
The texts, as obtained in their original format, will be stored securely (with two-factor authentication) in a dedicated folder on the researcher's OneDrive; for safety and integrity, only the researcher and their promotors will have secure access to this folder drive.
Subsequently, the texts will be converted into text files, and uploaded as a private corpus on the Sketch Engine platform (Kilgarriff et al. 2014; www.sketchengine.eu). The corpora were automatically processed and annotated using Sketch Engine's standard tools for English; see https://www.sketchengine.eu/corpora-and-languages/english-text-corpora/. Again, using Sketch Engine's secure functionalities, this corpus was shared only with the researcher and their promotors.
We acknowledge the generous financial support of the North-West University's (NWU) Faculty of Humanities for supporting the Corpus Cooperative at NWU (COCO@NWU). Through its aims to advance corpus-based research in the digital humanities, it directly supported and benefitted this research. Nonetheless, all searches, calculations, and interpretations are the researcher's only, and cannot be attributed to NWU.