Africa : African Languages

[Divine_Thought]

Hujambo...ummm...that's about all I remember from the Kiswahili class I took a couple of years ago. I'm an Africana Studies major and learning an African language was apart of the curriculum, but now I think I need a refresher course. I think exposure to African languages is good for us all, because to really learn the language you have to emerse yourself in the culture and the thought process of the people who speak it. After I re-learn Kiswahili I want to learn Zulu...I have this wonderful CD where the guy is singing one of the songs in Zulu and it sounds so beautiful.
Kwaheri!

 

[araegba]

E ku ikale Baba Ahmed/Hello Baba Ahmed,

Thank you for your kind welcome.

Araegba means a person from Egbaland.
The Egba kingdom is one of the Yoruba speaking kingdoms of
west Africa. And yes I am an Egbaman, I suppose I could have
used the Anglicised version Egbaman instead of Araegba. But I
like Araegba better.

Yes, I forgot to mention the Songhai language, it is spoken in
the extreme north-west corner of Nigeria, parts of Niger, and
also Mali. I do not have any information about the number of
speakers. You may feel free to look it up further on google
search.

Check out my reply to you on the "Are you African or..." thread,
you may not like my reply, nevertheless post your response.


Odigba/Bye for now.

 

[araegba]

Bawo ni eyin enyan mi/ how you doin' my people ?

Here's some weblinks that might interest you.

A website looking at a variety of Nigerian Pidgin English, it shares
some similarities with Sierra Leonian Krio, Camerounian pidgin and possibly the Gullah language:
http://www.ngex.com/personalities/babawilly/dictionary/default.htm


A website for beginning learning the west African Yoruba language. An audio greeting in Yoruba, followed by English
welcomes you to the site. In the alphabet section, click on any
letter to hear the correct pronounciation:

http://www.learnyoruba.com/


This page shows the linguistic family of the Yoruba and related languages:

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=66


Another introductory website on the yoruba language, this one is in French though:

http://www.geocities.com/edeawoyoruba/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=Nigeria&seq=5


This here shows the Yoruba speaking area within Nigeria:

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_map.asp?name=Nigeria&seq=5


A general African languages website for children:

http://wus.africaonline.com/AfricaOnline/kidsonly/languages/index.html


Here is a general page looking at African languages and places where they are spoken.
The info is note totally accurate in all cases, but gives a rough idea:

http://www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Africa



Regards

 

[Emeka]

Why are the people on this site deluding themselves about the African continent and it's languanges. I've read many people wanting to learn Kiswahili as language...as if it were an authentic African language! Swahili is as language resulted from the mixing of Arab masters/slave traders and their African "servants". Therefore it is a bastardized(forgive my french) language...as is somali and even Hausa to many extent. It is closer to Arabic than it is to the neighboring African languages spoken in east Africa.

Just to make it clear to everyone the most wide spoken language spoken as first tongue on the African continent is not even African. It's Arabic, which is spoken by around 180 million people. Then Hausa, which is spoken by about 33 million(about 47 million if you count second language speakers). Then Yoruba with 28 million, followed by Igbo with about 25 million speakers. Believe it or not Swahili is not spoken by as much people. What gives Swahili it's linguistic strength is that it is spoken over a great distance along the coast of east Africa whilst the other three African languages are concentrated in a relatively small but highly dense rigion.

Now, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo speakers are predominantly found in the country of Nigeria. So I suggest that anyone trying to learn African languages look up and research this country, because Nigeria has more languages spoken within it's borders than any other country on the African continent.

 

[Queenie]

Very good points.

Are African Americans feeling the need to learn an African language because it gives them a sense of re-connection to Africa? After all, one of the successful ploys used by Europeans in the American slave trade was to deny Africans the opportunity to speak in their native tongue to make it difficult for them to plot an uprising. But even so, it was difficult for Africans to communicate among themselves on slave ships anyway because we came from so many different parts of Africa which, as you say, people spoke different languages.

I'm not sure that every African American that wants to learn how to speak an African language actually intends to use it, but it might be more of a 'romantic' notion than anything else. It could also be a form of rebellion to blatantly demonstrate that although we live in America, we don't consider English as our only language. So it could be a socio-political statement as well.

More and more, English is (or has) becoming more widespread around the world. Learning an African language is great if it empowers you. But as far as a r/evolution for Black people in America, we need to speak the language that the great majority of us understand, and ebonics works for me.