Language Decline and Death in Africa: Causes, Consequences and Challenges

by Herman M. Batibo

Overview

The aim of this book is to inform both scholars and the public about the nature and extent of the problem of language decline and death in Africa.  It resourcefully traces the main causes and circumstances of language endangerment, the processes and extent of language shift and death, and the consequences of language loss to the continent’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage.  The book outlines some of the challenges that have emerged out of the situation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781853598081
Publisher:	Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Publication date:	05/17/2005
Series:	Multilingual Matters , #132
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.85(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Dr. Herman M. Batibo is Professor of African Linguistics at the University of Botswana, Southern Africa. He was born in Mwanza, Tanzania, in 1947. He obtained his PhD at the University of La Sorbonne, Paris, in 1977. His other major publications include Le kesukuma: phonologie et morphologie ([1977] 1985), La Tanzanie: L’ujamaa face aux réalités (edited with Denis Martin, 1989), The Role of Language in the Discovery of Cultural History (1996), The State of Khoesan Languages in Botswana (edited with J. Tsonope, 2000), Botswana: The Future of the Minority Languages (edited with Birgit Smieja, 2000). Professor Batibo is currently the President of the Standing Committee of the World Congress of African Linguistics.

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CHAPTER 1

The Languages of Africa

The Linguistic Complexity of Africa

The African continent has been described as linguistically 'distinct' (Grenoble & Whaley, 1998: 42) because of its highly complex language situation. Apart from the multitude and high concentration of languages, the patterns of language choice and use are remarkably intricate, as most people are multilingual – that is, they speak several languages – and select the language or variety of language they use according to the context. For example, a Tshivenda speaker in South Africa may speak Tshivenda to his parents but use IsiZulu to address his workmates, and then receive orders from his employer in Afrikaans. But he may use English in a bank or when talking to educated strangers, and finally use Fanagalo in a pub with colleagues. To this Tshivenda speaker, each of these languages would provide not only a communicative function but also a social role.

The sociolinguistic profile of Africa can be looked at either horizontally or vertically. Looking at it horizontally entails doing a user analysis, that is, establishing who speaks which language in order to determine the distinct language communities. This aspect of study would consider the plurilingual nature of the African continent. On the other hand, if we consider the African sociolinguistic profile vertically, we would be looking at use analysis, that is, the set of languages that members of a speech community have at their disposal, and therefore use at their discretion according to the subject matter, the personal relationships with their interlocutors, the context, the mode of communication and other circumstances and needs (Mkude, 2001: 160). In this chapter, we shall look at the horizontal profile. The vertical profile will be considered in the next chapter.

African Plurilingualism

Compared with other continents, Africa has by far the highest concentration of languages in the world. Various estimates have put the number of languages at between 2000 and 2500, accounting for at least 30% of the world languages (Coulmas, 1983; Crystal, 1997; Grimes, 2000; Heine & Nurse, 2000). The large range between the lowest and the highest figures is a reflection of the difficulties that both scholars and the African countries themselves face in deciding the number of languages in a country, and hence in the whole continent. Some of these problems are as follows.

It is often difficult to distinguish between language, dialect and dialect clusters, particularly where the speakers' opinions do not tally with those of the language researchers. For example, while the Chagga people, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, consider themselves as speakers of one language, one could easily identify at least three different speech forms which are not mutually intelligible. Linguistically, therefore, one would consider them to be three languages. On the other hand, although the Sesotho, Setswana and Sepedi speakers in southern Africa see themselves as speakers of three distinct languages, their languages are mutually intelligible and linguistically could be considered as dialects of one language. This was the case before the arrival of missionaries in the 19th century, who established different orthographies for each of these varieties, thus separating them from each other. A similar situation arose in Cameroon, where Ewondo and Bulu, which are to a great extent mutually intelligible, had separate orthographies prepared by two rival missionary organisations (Pierre Alexandre, pers. comm.). Situations like these are very common in Africa. The problem is often compounded by the fact that a language may be intelligible to speakers of another language. However, such intelligibility may not be due to linguistic proximity but, rather, to one group learning the other language. This is, for example, the case of the Central Khoe languages |Gwi and ||Gana, whose speakers understand Naro, another Central Khoesan language. But such intercomprehension is because most of the |Gwi and ||Gana speakers have learnt to speak Naro.

Some of the African languages are found in dialect clusters with graded intercomprehension. Thus, the nearest varieties would be mutually intelligible, but not those at a distance from each other. It therefore becomes difficult to decide where to establish a language boundary. This is the case with many of the Khoesan languages of the Central Kalahari, which are often found in dialectal continua as their speakers traditionally live in small, scattered groups for hunting and foraging strategies. Thus, they tend to develop a continuum of dialectal differences, which do not always correspond to their geographical habitat. A typical case is that of the Eastern Khoe cluster comprising Kua, Cua, Tshwa, Shua, Deti, Chire-Chire, Kgoro, Xaise, Phaleng, Hiechware and Danisi. It has become difficult to decide how to group them into sets of languages, particularly as extensive descriptive studies of each of these clusters are still lacking.

For political reasons, most African countries do not include questions on language or ethnicity in their census surveys. So it becomes difficult to know who speaks what language or who belongs to which ethnic group. It therefore remains a matter of guesswork on the part of the language researchers. In most of the ex-British colonies, the last census reports to make reference to language and ethnicity were those published just before the countries' independences in the late 1950s.

Given that most of the African languages do not have written traditions, no standardisation has been carried out to determine language entities or which dialects fall under one orthographic system. In some cases, even where the speakers of two forms of speech recognise themselves as belonging to one language entity, they may still want to see different orthographies established to reflect the characteristics of each. This is the case with Sebirwa and Setswapong in eastern Botswana. These two are mutually intelligible, but their speakers would like to see separate orthographies established for each to ensure that neither 'swallows' the other. The establishing of two orthographies would inevitably mean the recognition of two standard language forms.

The names of some languages are known only through documentation. Some of these names may represent alternative forms of an existing language, while others may refer to languages which are no longer in existence. For example, earlier writers on South African languages included a number of Khoesan languages such as |Xam, [??]Khomani, !Ora and ||Xegwi. Such languages have since become extinct (Traill, 1995) but continue to be listed in the literature.

Finally, some speech forms cannot be called true languages as they are only created so that people who speak different languages can communicate. Such speech forms are known as 'pidgins'. An example of a pidgin is Fanagalo in southern Africa, which is spoken mainly in the mines. It is only when a pidgin becomes fully developed and has mother-tongue speakers that it is recognised as a language. In this case it is known as a 'creole'. It is difficult, at times, to decide when to consider a pidgin as a true language, as in the case of the many English-, French- and Portuguese-based pidgins in Africa.

In view of the above reasons, it has not been possible to agree on a definite figure for the number of African languages. In fact, some recent conservative estimates have come up with as few as just over 1400 (see, for example, Maho, 2004). However, most scholars would put the number at more than 2000 languages (Grimes, 2000; Heine & Nurse, 2000; Mann & Dalby, 1987).

African Language Families

Following Greenberg (1963), it is generally agreed that the African languages can be classified into four major phyla or families. These families have been designated as Niger–Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Khoesan.

Niger–Congo (also known as Congo-Kordofanian) is the largest of the four African language families. It stretches from the Atlantic coast in West Africa near the River Gambia across West Africa to the Indian Ocean in eastern Africa, and covers most of Africa south of the Equator. Niger–Congo comprises 10 sub-families (Table 1).

The Afro-Asiatic family, on the other hand, occupies most of what is traditionally known as the Maghreb in North Africa, including the northern parts of the Sahara, stretching east into the Abyssinian mountains down into eastern Africa. The family is known as Afro-Asiatic because some of the languages spread into the Middle East. The family has six sub-families (Table 2).

The Nilo-Saharan language family is based mainly in the Nile valley in what is now Sudan, with pockets in the Sahara and West Africa regions. There are four Nilo-Saharan language sub-families, which could also be seen as independent families (Bender, 2000: 44). The fourth sub-family has six distinct branches (Table 3).

Finally, the Khoesan languages are found mainly in southern Africa, with pockets in East and Central Africa. The Khoesan languages can be grouped into five sub-families (Table 4). (The extinct languages have been excluded from the table.)

Heine & Nurse (2000) have given estimates of the number of languages in each family. These figures are given in Table 5. Evidently, as seen above, they should be considered as broad estimates.

The multitude of languages on the African continent has also given rise to varying degrees of plurilingualism in the 55 African states and territories. The term plurilingualism is used in this study to denote a state of having many languages in one country or continent, whereas the term multilingualism is restricted to the state of a person who can speak many languages or a community whose members speak many languages. Although, if one divides the number of the African languages by the number of African states, each state would have an average of between 35 and 40 languages, the plurilingual situation is not an even one, as some countries are quasi-monolingual in indigenous languages. Such countries include Burundi, Lesotho, Rwanda, Swaziland, Cape Verde and the Seychelles. These languages are designated as quasi-monolingual as they are not completely monolingual, given that there are pockets of speakers of other languages either from across the border or present as long-time settlers. For example, although Swaziland is inhabited mainly by the Siswati-speaking people, there are some speakers of IsiZulu and Tsonga languages from across the border. On the other hand, in some countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Sudan and Tanzania at least 100 languages are spoken within their borders. In fact, more than 400 languages are spoken in Nigeria. Moreover, there is significant inequality in the number of speakers per language. While major languages such as Arabic and Hausa have tens of millions of speakers, others have just a few hundred. As we shall see, this gross inequality has many sociolinguistic implications.

The incidence of plurilingualism has become more conspicuous in Africa than in most other parts of the world mainly because it has been coupled with other forms of diversity, particularly cultural and ethnic. As a result, African plurilingualism has had a considerable impact on many political, cultural, socio-economic and educational decisions. Although most African countries have played down the realities of plurilingualism and multiculturalism, the effect remains considerable. It touches on matters of national unity, group identity, language choice (i.e. ethnic, cultural and linguistic rights) and community culture, which in turn impact on nationhood, state democracy, equality and harmonious development (Batibo, 2001a: 123).

In dealing with this reality, African countries have followed a number of options, which include the following (Batibo, 2001a):

• To remain uncommitted on the question of language policy, so as to be able to adopt pragmatic solutions depending on the prevailing socio-political circumstances.

• To use the ex-colonial language as the official language – and often as the national language as well – where there is no major language to serve as a national medium. Such an option is usually taken because the ex-colonial language is thought to be neutral and can be used in technical fields. Moreover, it would not be associated with any ethnic or cultural bias, and so does not benefit one group over another.

• To adopt the majority language, where such a language predominates in the country, as the national language.

• To allocate to some of the major languages certain public roles at the regional or district level.

• To accord only nominal public roles or none to the smaller languages. In fact, this is the option that most African countries have chosen. Most African countries are silent or hesitant on what public roles to accord to the so-called minority languages. Such languages are frowned upon as stumbling blocks to the desired state of monolingualism, monoculturalism and national identity, which are considered to be ingredients for national unity.

These options are not mutually exclusive as some countries have combined several of them.

African Languages in Contact Movements and migrations in Africa

In the previous section we have seen how the more than 2000 African languages can be repartitioned into four language families, each found in a geographical area. Although most of the languages are spoken in specific territories by well-defined language groups, there have been continuous movements and migrations of the speakers, thus causing contacts between the various languages and language groups. These movements were motivated by several factors, such as the search for more socio-economically sustainable environments, the lessening of demographic pressure, political strife, better grazing grounds or the urge to spread one's faith.

Historical contacts between African languages

The first contacts began many thousands of years ago when the four language families diversified into sub-families whose speakers began to spread across Africa. This brought many groups into contact. Some of the consequences of these contacts were the disappearance of certain languages due to the elimination or absorption of the speakers into the conquerors' societies. From historical records, we read about how many languages in North Africa were eliminated after the Arab conquest of the Maghreb region. All the Egyptian languages have disappeared, leaving only Coptic and Demotic, which, fortunately, have survived because of their religious functions. Also there were many Berber languages in the areas that have now become Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya. Most of these have disappeared, leaving pockets of languages and language clusters. Moreover, the arrival of the Bantu and other groups in eastern, central and southern Africa eliminated or absorbed the numerous Khoesan and pygmy languages that were spoken from southern Africa to as far north as southern Sudan. As a result, the Khoesan languages were drastically reduced in number and pushed into the arid parts of central Kalahari, with a few pockets in eastern and central Africa. Equally, many of the early Cushitic and Nilotic languages of eastern Africa were eliminated by the mighty Bantu groups more than 1500 years ago, leaving only pockets of these sub-families in eastern and central Africa.

Many of the movements and migrations were motivated by socioeconomic factors. One typical example is that of the Peul or Fulfude, who have roamed across many parts of West Africa in search of grazing grounds. Equally, the Maasai have moved constantly in many parts of East Africa in search of better grazing land. Many farming groups, such as the Sukuma of Lake Victoria, have migrated as far as southern Tanzania and even northern Zambia looking for fertile land for cultivation and cattle herding. Also, trade and commerce brought many groups together. The active inter-ethnic trading activities along the eastern African coast gave support to the spread of Kiswahili in that region. Equally, the wide use of Dyula and Songhay as trading languages in many parts of West Africa helped in the spread of those languages. On the other hand, demographic pressure has been a crucial factor in group movement, particularly among the farming and pastoral communities. Politically inspired wars have been another frequent cause of migration. One example is Chaka Zulu's imperial conquest, which caused migrations as far north as East Africa. Other historical conflicts between rulers or groups have caused substantial movements. Finally, religious wars, particularly the holy wars waged by Muslim believers in North and West Africa, have also brought Arabic, the language of Islam, into conflict with other languages (Idris, 2003).

(Continues…)

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Copyright © 2005 Herman M. Batibo.
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Table of Contents

Preface
1: The Languages of Africa
2: Patterns of Language Use in Africa
3: African Languages as a Resource
4: The Minority Languages of Africa
5: The Endangered Languages of Africa
6: Language Shift and Death in Africa
7: Language Maintenance
8: Language Empowerment Measures
References
Index
Appendix

Editorial Reviews

This is an excellent introduction to the topic of endangered languages in Africa. 

Mike Cahill 16.3542

This is an excellent introduction to the topic of endangered languages in Africa. 

Linguist List 16.3542 - Mike Cahill