ENGLISH IN AFRICA thuyết trình môn đa dạng tiếng anh

ENGLISH IN
AFRICA


Members
Anh Kiệt
Phụng Nhi
Ngọc Hà
Ngọc Mai
Hà Trang
Phi Yến


TABLE OF CONTENTS

01

The countries & history
1.1 Language
1.2History

02
03

African English
3.1 A preliminary sketch
3.2 Phonology
3.3 Syntax
3.4 Lexis
3.5 Pragmatics

English in Africa today
2.1 Native language
2.2 Domains
2.3 In education


I. The countries
and the history
of the
introduction of
English


•

Four countries in East and Central Africa have some
connections with English but are not discussed in
detail:

•

Rwanda, where English is currently, quite remarkably,
replacing French as the language of government and
education.

•

Somalia, where the Somali language coexists with
English and Italia.

•

Ethiopia, where secondary and higher education are
mainly in English, but most other state functions are
in Amharic or a regional language.

•

Southern Sudan, where English is well established,
and may shortly be the official language of an

independent South Sudan.


1.1 Languages
•

Ghana, is the size of the UK, with less than a third of its population, yet it
has 42 different languages.

•

On the other hand, in Kenya and Tanzania (and to some extent Uganda)
Swahili is a lingua franca and in at least Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho and
Zimbabwe, one language is spoken by a majority of the population.


•

In South Africa 70% people speak languages which are mutually

comprehensible with Zulu.
• The modern European ‘monolingual’ states are the result of
several centuries of aggressive language policy, border
adjustment, ethnic cleansing.


The indigenous languages in sub-Saharan Africa mostly belong to
three groups:
- Afro-Asiatic - the group which includes Arabic, such as Hausa in
Northern Nigeria and adjoining areas.
- Cushitic/Sudanic and Nilotic in Ethiopia, Somalia and northern
Kenya and Uganda.
- Niger-Congo.


The Niger-Congo languages in general are often tone languages.
The examples:
-àwò (two low tones)
-‘star’ versus áwó (two high tones)
English street appears as a loan into Yoruba as títì.
Within the Niger-Congo family, the Bantu languages of West, East
and Southern Africa are agglutinative.
The correct name for Swahili is KiSwahili.


1.2

History
•

•

Bantu languages seem to have started
expanding south and east at the beginning of
the Iron Age, perhaps with the Nok culture of
around 500 BC in central Nigeria or maybe
even earlier.
Some people speaking pre-Bantu languages
– the San (‘Bushmen’) – and there used to be
another group called Khoi (‘Hottentots’).


■

■

Islamic ones in contact with the Arabic-speaking
world along the southern border of the Sahara and
the east coast, and pagan ones to the south and
west.
Benin City in 1485 West Africa was a patchwork of
empires and small kingdoms. On the east coast,
trade with Egypt and Arabia had started by 200 BC.


By 1000 AD there were Muslim African trading cities
and ports along the coast, importing cotton and
luxury goods. Swahili developed during 1000 ad on
the coasts of what are now Kenya and Tanzania. It is

a Bantu language with extensive borrowing of
vocabulary from Arabic and Persian and without
tones. By the beginning of the nineteenth century
English had become a useful foreign language.


●

Some locals in the main trading cities knew English well. Written
Nigerian English dates from as early as 1786 (Banjo 1993)

●

The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807.

●

From 1787 ex-slaves from Britain, North America and the
Caribbean settled or were settled at Freetown in Sierra Leone

(and some at Banjul (Bathurst) in Gambia).
●

From the 1820s freed slaves from the USA settled in Liberia and
created a community speaking a variety of American English.


●

The first mission station in Cameroon was opened in

1843/44 by Joseph Merrick.

●

During 19th century, missionaries with the outer circle
various European languages as L1 started to spread
Christianity, English and Swahili inland from the coast.

●

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a Bantu clan
in Southern Africa called the Zulus united a large number
of Bantu-speakers into one state (Davidson 1984).


Britain took possession of the Cape at the end of the
eighteenth century, and launched an assimilationist policy
towards the Afrikaners, Dutch-speaking settlers who had
been in the Cape since the seventeenth century. Late in
the nineteenth century, rivalry among European powers
led to a ‘scramble for Africa’ and the Congress of Berlin in
1884–5 ratified the division of the continent into zones
belonging to seven European powers.

●


●

English was generally now the language of administration and the

higher courts, and a key language for career success in business and
the extractive industries of Southern Africa.

●

English often played a part from the first years of education in
response to mixtures of mother tongues among pupils, lack of material
in a particular language and parental demands.


2.0 English
in Africa
today
English remains the main language of
education, administration and
business.


2.1 English as a native language

- At least three groups in Africa had English (or creole) as their
mother tongue.
-There are also indigenous groups who are going over to English or
pidgin (thus creolising it).
-The Cape Flats coloured community in South Africa has
traditionally spoken nonstandard Afrikaans, but parents are now
speaking second-language English to their children


2.2 Domains for English and

other languages
-English is the main European language
used can be placed in a hierarchy.

English is usually in practice
the sole language used for official
and public purposes.


-The Englishes of West Africa have many similarities in form and
sociological situation.
-In most West African countries pidgin is widely spoken between
speakers of different African languages.
-Electronic media spread the same US, British and local models over
whole countries.
-The varieties of English in the other countries in eastern and southern
Africa also have many features of form in common, and a tradition of
movement for work within the regions.


-In Zambia and Zimbabwe English is very dominant and local languages
have little or no public role.
-In South Africa the government has launched an extremely ambitious
languagerights policy.
-Three fairly monolingual states in southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho
and Swaziland
-English is the predominant written language in most of anglophone
Africa and the main language even of conversational writing.

English seems to retain a public position in all these

states, and in most cases is acquiring native speakers
and expanding, even when it is not particularly
functional


2.3 English in
education
The debate between Westernizers and orientalists about the correct
medium for education in a colonial environment responds to an insoluble
problem created by colonization.
-If education is offered in the language of the colonizers, it
alienates the local educated from their own community and creates an
elite.
-But if education is offered in the vernacular, the colonized
people suspect an attempt to keep knowledge from them and provide
second class service.
Educationalists basically agree that it is better to acquire literacy in a
language one is familiar with, rather than struggle to learn literacy and
a new language at the same time (Cummins 1983, 1986)
And, there is a good deal of evidence that children learn content
ineffectively in languages that they and their teachers have not fully
mastered.


A useful
comparison can
be made
between
Zambia and
Malawi

-In Zambia, English is the only potential link language and is the
medium of education even at primary school Zambian children normally
do not learn to read their mother tongue.
-In Malawi Nyanja/Chichewa was made an official language and
primary education was carried out in it, with English as a subject.
But this language is also spoken in Zambia, so it is possible to compare
the policies.
-Williams (1996) showed that while Zambian children could only
read English, Malawian ones not only read as well in English as Zambian
ones, but also were literate in Nyanja/Chichewa, which was their mother
tongue.
Parents on the other hand remember colonialist policies aimed at
excluding blacks and can generally see that knowledge of English is a key
to success in their society.


-Zambia has many mother tongues, and large urban areas
where people of different ethnic backgrounds mix.
-Politically, in a country with 30 mother tongues and limited
resources, it would be very expensive to provide even primary textbooks in
every mother tongue, or even 5 or 6.
-In theory, Foreign aid money might be used, but in practice it
has normally been directed to English-language materials, cheaper to
produce because of economies of scale, and frequently written by the aidgiver’s own experts and published by their own publishers (Banda 1996)