Africa's educational systems are undergoing a quiet revolution. As these systems move away from working exclusively in the old colonial languages, usually English or French, bilingual schools which use local indigenous languages are springing up in many regions of Africa. This paper points out the historical processes driving the bilingual…

According to the Medical Council of Malawi, one of the conditions for a licence to be granted to an individual who wants to practise medicine in Malawi is the practitioner's ability to speak and write English fluently. This means that the expatriate medical practitioner is not required by law to demonstrate fluency in Chichewa (the national…

This study evaluates translations from a European into a Nigerian language. By taking a close look at the Nigerian language translations of Radio Nigeria, the manner in which the Nigerian mass media copes with the problem of multilingualism is addressed. Specifically, the translation of English into Yoruba, one of the major languages of Nigeria,…

THIS VOLUME PRESENTS THE LINGUISTIC MATERIAL ASSEMBLED BY THE AUTHORS (MUCH OF IT AT FIRST HAND) IN THE COURSE OF THEIR CLASSIFICATION OF THE NON-BANTU LANGUAGES OF NORTHEASTERN AFRICA. THIS MATERIAL, DEALING MAINLY WITH MORPHEMES AND GRAMMATICAL AND SYNTACTIC BEHAVIOR, INCLUDES DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING LANGUAGES--MORU-MANGBETU,…

A conference of African scholars was held in the United States in 1979 to develop a consensus and a statement about the direction that African language teaching and learning should take in this decade. African languages are among the so-called "less-commonly taught languages," and funding for their teaching and study has come from…

Defining a lingua franca as a "common language which is habitually used as a medium of communication between groups of people whose mother tongues are different, "this book begins by comparing various Africa lingua francas and discussing questions of general relevance to their study, and then presents statements of varying length about…

The present work deals with Africanistic problems, raising questions of interest for general linguists, and linguists working in Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, and other special branches. The first two chapters deal with the field and difficulties of African studies and the general characterization of the African languages. Following chapters discuss…

Black English has existed for a considerable length of time in the North as well as in the South. West African slaves who came to New York in 1625 found a contact language useful and mandatory in order to function in the slave community. The earliest slaves in the New York area may have used Pidgin English, Pidgin Portuguese, or Pidgin French…

Standard classification schemes were developed when research on Africana was just beginning. That explains the very little provision made for Africana in them and, consequently, the problems in classifying proliferating Africana material. It is suggested that certain classes in the schemes be used to develop the classification of African history.…

Basically a defense of Joseph Greenberg's classification of African Languages (1963), this article also discusses in non-technical terms and in reference to the African situation how linguists deal with language change and how language relationships are determined. (FB)

Discusses the influence of African languages on Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America. Provides a sampling of words of African origin with notes on their derivation. (EKN)

Translation into Bafia of the French present tense in its different values requires the translator to make some decisions based on semantic values and implied time factors. Specific considerations and problems are discussed with examples given. (MSE)

The cultural interplay in Africa between indigenous, Islamic, and Western legacies has given rise to four language types described as Afro-ethnic, Afro-Islamic, Afro-Western, and Western. Their definitions, tendencies, and characteristics in writing, geographic spread, demographic distribution, and functional value are discussed. (10 references)…

Discusses problems and insights gained during the preparation of a bilingual dictionary of Spanish--a Romance and ultimately Indo-European language--and Swahili, a coastal Bantu language of the Niger-Congo stock of African languages. (Author/VWL)