"It has been reported (Vossen 1988b) that young speakers in Ngamiland tend to abandon Sekgalagadi in favour of Setswana... it may not be advisable to assume that the trend is necessarily the same in the whole country.... Still, in view of the low social position of the speakers and considerable pressure from Setswana, the language is likely to lose many speakers as time goes by.

However, it is also true that the social situation, including how speakers perceive the situation of themselves and their language, may well change. This may actually be happening in this case. Solway (1994) reports that the Bakgalagadi in recent years assert themselves much more than before and show much pride in their language."

"The majority of Shekgalagadi speakers are no longer monolingual... This multilingualism is the beginning of a slow but sure process of shift at the end of which originally monolingual native speakers acquire mother-tongue-like proficiency in Setswana, while losing by the same token competence in Shekgalagadi, the symbol of their ethnic identity."

"...the Kgalagadi population sample examined in this study still points to a very high rate of illiteracy of respondents in their own mother tongue."