Talk:Languages of Africa

Untitled

Shouldn't this article be called African languages (plural)? Strangeloop (talk) 22:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I concur. - Mustafaa 03:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Besides, there are already many pages that are linking to African Languages instead (which is a redirect to African language at present). But now the existence of that page poses a problem if we are going to move this one. And by just plain copy-pasting the text, the history of this page will be gone. Anyone suggestions on how to solve this?

I've sorted it Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 10:35, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wow that was fast! Thanks! - Strangeloop (talk) 10:36, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Map & text

I created a map and added it to the article. I will adjust the text soon; on the map, I divided Niger-Congo in A and B to show the size of the Bantoid branch. - Strangeloop (talk) 12:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I really like the layout of the thematic map (appealing colours, smooth edges). But one thing that's missing is a correct colour shading for those areas where Indo-European language speakers form the majority (i.e. western South Africa, southern Namibia, plus all off-shore islands except Socotra, Djerba, Mayotte, the Comoros, Madagascar, Zanzibar and Pemba). Also, I believe the extent of Khoisan as shown is exaggerated slightly, or refers to the extent of that family several generations ago. Similarly, much of North Africa has gone through language shift and is now primarily Arabic-speaking, although this doesn't affect the colour on the map but perhaps the placement of the language name labels? --Big Adamsky 20:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Big Adamsky, because I'm trying to centralize the discussion, I have copied these comments to commons:Image talk:African language families.png and responded there. — mark ✎ 10:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I really like the African languages map, but I find the North African distribution questionable. Total absence of Arabic in the Northwest is misleading. Arabic is not only a second language of the majority, but also the first language of the absolute majority in Tunisia, a clear majority in Algeria and Morocco, and a significant pluraity in Mauritania. As it stands, the map seems to suggest that Arabic is spoken in Egypt and parts of Lybia, while Berber is spoken in the rest of North Africa (which is clearly not the reality). Berber is alive, true, but so is Arabic very clearly.--Karkaron 04:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand why the Nubian languages are colored as Afro-Asiatic. They are Nilo-Saharan languages related to the languages of South Sudan, like Dinka and Nuer.Sukkoth 12:25, 21 February 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sukkoth Qulmos (talk • contribs)

New version

I replaced the article with a major rewrite Mustafaa and I have been working on some time ago. There is still very much that remains to be done. I'll add a to do list here in a minute. — mark ✎ 12:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

African languages itself on Wikimedia project

I'm trying to gather information about the situation of African languages itself on Wikimedia projects. For this I created a page on meta. I'm inviting you to indicate your knowledge about African languages itself, and possibly to help out with collecting some stats and adding links. Thanks, G-u-a-k-@ 12:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Style for African language names

I'd like to start a debate about a WP style for the names of African languages, including capitalisation. Currently WP articles may refer to: Swahili, Kiswahili, kiSwahili, KiSwahili; or Ndebele, Sindebele, isiNdebele and sinDebele; etc. Redirects help, but its very confusing for the casual reader and hopeless for Wiki search.

My own (tentative) feeling is that, when writing in English, we should follow the English capitalisation rules, thus French not français, and German language, not deutsche Sprache: so Sindebele not isiNdebele. The language's own name(s) for itself could then follow in brackets, as with placenames. But I'm sure there will be lots of strong opinion about this... JackyR 00:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, your "tentative feeling" is the same as the already existing wikipedia policy... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 20:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh I do hope so... Can you point me at a specific WP language-name policy page (have so far only found general MoS on loan words)? I brought it up cos if the policy exists it sure ain't being followed... I've been tripping over Tswana/seTswana/Setswana (not to mention baTswana/Batswana, etc) and all the variants on Ndebele, and there seems to have been a minor war over Swahili/Kiswahili (Talk:Swahili_language/archive1). JackyR 02:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

It might be in the MoS somewhere -- but that is useful only until some stubborn individual decides to change it to fit her/his own opinion of "what is right". In my experience, the English forms are followed unless specific examples can be shown to be (1) either US- or UK-centric or (2) somehow offensive to the locals. If you are familiar with the material, you probably know where the most serious problems lie.

But instead of worrying that someone will find fault with your work (if they do, it probably won't be due to anything you have done), just use common sense & try to be consistent in your work. And remember the rule of Internet volunteerism: when you do the work, you are allowed to be the boss. -- llywrch 18:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Cheers. You're right, I'm afraid of being being toasted. Most writing about Africa by outsiders is open to the charge of being US- or Euro-centric. If I go through an existing article, changing language names for the benefit of consistency and the uninformed reader, I am certainly European-ising (I'm British) an African English article. This makes me uncomfortable. However, I think we're failing our non-African readership if we don't make references to African languages easy to search, navigate and understand.

My second issue is just that, if we do want a standard style where poss, this is a good time to try to do it, while African WP material still comparatively small. Currently it's scrappy. If you look at List of ISO 639 codes, you'll find, eg "nya: Chichewa, Chewa, Nyanja", (and I've usually heard Chichewa called that, not Chewa) but "sna: Shona" (not chiShona or Chishona). And look at Great Zimbabwe §2: "a Shona (dialect: chiKaranga)" - two styles for the price of one, and yet jolly useful if you understand African language names. Setswana and Tswana are the Botswana and South African English versions of the same language.

To summarise:

1. Many African languages use prefixes (ki, chi, tshi, se, isi) to make the root name of a culture into the name of a language. Example: Tswana people (called baTswana) speak the Tswana language (seTswana).
2. The policy described above means WP would say "The Zulu language (also spelled isiZulu or Isizulu) ..."
3. The policy will lead to articles saying eg, "In the Zulu language, greetings are very important;" or, more likely, "In Zulu, ..." The former is cumbersome, the latter slightly un-natural to speakers of various African Englishes, who may chose to contribute, in the same article, eg, "isiZulu contains click sounds." What is good editorial practice when this happens?
4. Capitalisation thus: "chiShona", has the advantage of revealing the root more clearly, but the disadvantage of not following English grammar, confusing non-Africans and being difficult for English speakers to read (see Tswana for same prob with ba- prefix). "Chishona'" conceals the root, again confusing non-Africans. Which is better if an editor does use this instead of "Shona"?
5. There are countries in which the local English usually names the African language with its prefix (eg Setswana, Chichewa). Does WP accept this and vary the policy according to local usage? (And god help us wrt different countries with different names for the same language.)

Does any of this matter? The editor in me likes some sort of consistency, and I do think some articles are currently difficult to understand for non-Africans. But as African Wiki-usage increases, I'm reasonably sure language names will lead to edit wars and vitriolic accusations. I can certainly use my skill and judgement to create what works for me but I'd like people with whom to share the blame - ahem, to help me reach more consensual usage!

PS Have found Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) - but unfortunately it has little helpful. If we reach some consensus here, I'll post there.JackyR 22:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC) (One of life's worriers...)

I don't mean to repeat myself, but as I said above "use common sense & try to be consistent in your work". You appear to know a bit about the subject, so I have trust that your instincts will lead you to the correct result in most cases. (For example, English practice is to use "Zulu" for the ethnic group & "Zulu language" for what they speak. -- which appears to be what you'd like to do.) And if nativc speakers of African languages start flaming you over these choices, try to be accomidating while firmly pointing them to the guidelines about civil behavior on Wikipedia: ignorance is not an excuse for being the target of hostile behavior. -- llywrch 23:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

My 2-thebe worth:

Forms like Setswana, Sindebele (capitalised like that) should be favoured except where (eg Zulu) there is an established Eng lang version.

Distinctions between languages and cultures should be maintained. Words like 'Bantu' should NEVER be used as shorthand for a race.

Guinnog 17:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Basically agree with what has been said - use the English versions of the African languages in question. We say German not Deutch, Spanish not Espanhol, Chinese not (whatever it is in Mandarin)... similarly we should say Zulu not what Zulus call themselves... Mikkerpikker ... 03:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat late to the party, but I, too, basically agree with what has been said. Use whatever terms are most common for article names. Expand on the name in the article itself, if needed (at the very least, mention the native name). JackyR, I think it is a good initiative to try to get some consistency in this area.

There is one thing I would like to add: be not too dependent on the Ethnologue (this is especially an issue in this field, as not many people have access to offline sources on African languages). The Ethnologue is a great resource overall, but it shouldn't be treated as a primary source. Thus, to give a recent example, when it says that Ekoti is called Koti —thereby omitting the noun class prefix—, it deviates from most publications on that language (scholarly and otherwise, in English as well as Portuguese), in which it is usually called Ekoti. My position is that we should stick to Ekoti in such a case, because that is the most common term. And on a related issue: these are precisely the cases where the Google test is notoriously irreliable. Searching a good Africanist database usually gives a far better indication. — mark ✎ 21:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

"Established English" names are not so simple. For example, the South African government generally uses prefixed forms in English publications (isiXhosa, siZulu, siNdebele, or possibly IsiXhosa, etc.) Also, established among whom? How many people outside of Africa have heard of tshiVenda? I call it "Venda", but most people who speak about it probably also speak it, or are experts, especially outside Africa and so are more likely to call it tshiVenda. However, I definitely support:

• Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho (in fact, it was I who moved SeSotho to Sotho language) --대조 | Talk 19:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Established usage in English is most certainly "Venda" not "tshiVenda". I'm from SA & I've never even heard of the latter. The question is this: what name do English speakers in the relevant area/country call the language in question? Answer: Venda. Besides, Venda has 5,990,000 Google hits [1] but tshiVenda only 61,500 [2]. The same will be true for any other local language... Mikkerpikker ... 19:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Mikkerpikker is bang on: What do English speakers in the area/country call the language.

But generally, Google test not 100% reliable in this field, as majority of web content supplied by Highly Connected Countries which then duplicate each others' contibutions - and biases. Better to look at where usages appear. JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Micheal lives in Cape-Town, so it's not too surprising that he's never heard anyone calling it "Tshivenda". It's like an Ethiopian claiming he's never heard anyone calling Mandarin "Putonghua".
-User:ZyXoas 12:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh good, it seems tshi- is the right prefix for Venda. I've never used it myself, but seemed to remember it from somewhere. But I'm afraid that your Putonghua in Ethiopia analogy doesn't work: Michael lives in South Africa. Guess where Venda is spoken? In the not-very-far-away South Africa. I think local should mean something closer to "in the same country" than "in the same town". I maintain that having the article at TshiVenda is the same as having Standard Mandarin at Putonghua. --대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with JackyR. I have expertise with the English langauge, not with Africa. A useful principle is to make the encyclopedia usable to as many non-experts as possible. The name of the language in that language doesn't help non-speakers, including, by defintion, most Africans.BrainyBabe 20:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

On the capitalisation issue: I don't think the "look like English" works here. I can handle SiNdebele or siNdebele (my preferred) but I think Sindebele looks wrong and is misleading. --대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Capitalisation is utterly retarded and is only useful to people who want morphology to be salient. I don't mean to offend anyone but it makes no sense to use capitals inside words like kiSwahili. If we StartEd to Use CapitalIzation in All wordS to Make MorphoLogy SalIent When Should we Start or End? We DoN't do it in EnglIsh in GenerAl, why should we Start DoIng it for AfricAn languages? ---moyogo 07:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

'Zulu' is by far the more common term in English for the language, and is the Wikipedia standard for now. Languages though are alive, and 'isiZulu' is in the process of being 'stolen' by English, and as is pointed out elsewhere is already quite widely accepted in South African English. Wikipedia though should use the more standard 'Zulu'. The same applies to the other languages. Greenman 23:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Please help with survey

So local Englishes should be the guide. I hope that's not controversial - it's the same as US/C'wealth spelling consensus. I've started a very unscientific survey of usage at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. Please help. Particularly, pls give references for usage, so these can be used in the corresponding articles. Cheers, JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Language boxes

Would it help to have a language box in each language-article, giving the root and some prefixes? This would help non-African readers understand and search articles effectively. It would also introduce stability, so that even if the title/text of an article go through edit wars, the terms will all still be searchable. Something like (but better...):

language of	se-
place of	ba-	Tswana
person of	mo-
people of	bo-

JackyR 16:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. Those kind of prefixes (more commonly known as noun class prefixes) are limited to Bantu languages; while these number about 300-400, in many of them the system is fairly similar so it would be very redundant to include boxes like that in any Bantu article. — mark ✎ 17:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

By redundancy, you mean being repeated in lots of articles? Yes, that would happen. In fact, I guess it will happen anyway, since this info would naturally appear in the description of each language. I don't think we can expect articles to limit themselves to, "This language has Bantu language properties, go look that up." Sure, that's cool for a reader researching top down - there's a group out there called bantu languages, this is how they work, here's an example. But I'm thinking of readers coming at this bottom up - look for a specific language, learn about it, maybe follow interesting links to the general family.

So the boxes wouldn't be for linguists, they'd be navigational aids for people trying to read about (say) Zimbabwe. Currently, if you don't know about these specific prefixes, you're well confused trying to fit the picture together, eg reading Great Zimbabwe. JackyR 18:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I think the boxes are a really good idea actually. They'd help clear up the whole isi- prefix question for non-native speakers or non-locals. I'm off to put one in Zulu :) Al Joziboy

Is Swahili Really an African Language

Swahili is a creole of English, Arabic, and other languages. As far as I know it isn't anyone's first languange. While it spoken almost exclusively in Africa, it doesn't seem that much more "African" than Enlish, French, or Dutch.

• Ummm... see Swahili. Also, Afrikaans is most certainly an African language, and yet it is a mixture of Dutch, English, German and others. Mikker ^(...) 01:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Yep, you got that all wrong, it's a bantu family language and is also a first language for tens of thousands, sometimes even their only language; also, lots of African languages have loan words from non African languages, so if being spoken in Africa is not your criterion, what is?? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 01:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• Swahili has some English loan words from recent colonial influence but was spoken on the coast of East Africa centuries before that as an important trading language. It is a Bantu language that because of its position as a lingua franca has absorbed quite some Arabic vocabulary, just like English in the middle ages has absorbed lots of French. Does that make English a creole? Furthermore, Swahili has hundreds of thousands of native speakers; see here for more details. — mark ✎ 07:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
• That was a nice April fool's. ---moyogo 07:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)yea ya digg ya guh jt

Swahili has millions and tens of millions of native speakers not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands; I’m a Tanzanian who lives here and so far 9 of 10 people of most people I meet are native Swahili speakers so plz learn to listen to actual people who live here and stop your guess work Nlivataye (talk) 16:37, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

GA failed

• It fails criteria 3. Not broad enough (talk about the history of the languages, the extinctions of them, the remoteness of some others, etc.) because so many aspects haven't been covered. Lincher 23:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Obviously. I'm removing the GAfailed template because the to do list at the top of the page was here all along, so anyone could see that this article still needed lots of work; besides, that list provides much more specific suggestions on how to improve the article. — mark ✎ 06:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Move Request

It was requested that this article be renamed but the procedure outlined at WP:RM#How to request a page move did not appear to be followed, and consensus could not be determined. Please request a move again with proper procedure if there is still a desire for the page to be moved. Thank you for your time! -- tariqabjotu 03:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Article rename

This article was recently renamed from "African languages" to "Language of Africa". The brief discussion regarding the naming of this article (at the top of this page) supported the name "African languages", so I have renamed it accordingly. I do not see the rationale for taking this issue to Wikipedia:Requested moves (per the above suggestion) when it can be adequately discussed here.--Ezeu 18:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I support the move back. Let's leave it at African languages, it is simply the most descriptive and least confusing option. — mark ✎ 07:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

To-do #5 national languages vs. official languages

I enlivened links for these terms in #5 of Mark's to-do list. The national language article needs some significant revisions, and if anyone works on this issue for this article, maybe they might want to add some copy to that one too. Probably also with official language. There is another category of possible use to this subject for the African languages article, and that is regional language. --A12n 04:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

African languages and Non African languages

I think that we should split an article of Languages of Africa. By Stooppy.

• I oppose the proposed split. You want to segregate a separate article for "Languages of Africa - non-African languages" ??? I don't think that would be very helpful, and there isn't enough to say about any languages that could possibly meet that description, to warrant a dedicated page, anyway. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 12:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. I fail to see the relevancy. --Ezeu 20:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose. Don't see the need/rational and in fact hard to see why. Proposer should please explain. TIA. --A12n 23:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Is it time to remove the proposal? (Since it has neither had much support nor further clarification.) Not sure on procedures. --A12n 11:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think a split along the lines of 'Colonial Languages of Africa' versus 'Indigenous Languages of Africa' would make more sense. (Perhaps that's what was originally intended?) But even then, I'm not sure the split is necessary. Scientivore 14:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The proposed split wasnt backed up by any reasoning or rationale, so Im removing the tag. - by Stevertigo 23:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Personal Opinions about problems with this article

In my opinion this article does not give a very good overview of African languages. The text provides very little information except that there are four or five classes of language. The maps are far more informative than the text, and yet insufficient. I'd love to look at this article and be able to figure out:

1. What are the most widely spoken languages (population estimates would be great),
2. Where are they are spoken (one of the maps almost does that, but not very clearly outlined)
3. It probably needs to be split into official national languages, lingua franca, and first language statistics
4. Some people are looking for information about languages in Africa today, while others want history and classifications of those languages, If you fail to separate them out enough it can be very confusing (see Lingua franca for an example of mixing the two)
5. Some description of what is interesting or unique about some African languages (famously, the popping sounds and the tonal qualities that enables communication by drum, and some interesting use of prefixes.) User:KeithWright

These are interesting suggestions. Personally I've tried to add selected info from time to time, but am aware that the topic is huge and the article, while an excellent start, could use some more fundamental work. I took the liberty of changing your bullets to numbers in order to facilitate discussion of the various points. Here are some thoughts:

1. I think that a table showing the top X number of African languages/"macrolanguages" in terms of speakership, with population, countries etc. might be good.
2. This gets complicated. The table I suggest above might help. More detailed maps would get overwhelming, or simplify things to the point of introducing misinformation.
3. I think this topic, "Languages of Africa," does include two broad themes: "African languages," or the languages indigenous to or unique to the continent (Arabic included, of course, as the mother tongue of millions); and "languages in Africa," which includes a lot of others, beginning with English, French, and Portuguese. The categories you suggest for statistics are neither easily clarifiable nor mutually exclusive. Some issues:
   1. "official national languages" as you put it is problematic. Many countries have two categories, official language and national language, with the latter being indigenous and fitting some other criteria that vary by country (BTW, the Wikipedia articles on those 2 subjects need thorough reworking to accommodate this sort of usage). Official languages include very often English, French, Portuguese, but also many African languages. A subsection on official languages could discuss why newly independent African states accepted the former colonial languages as official (de jure or de facto). This and brief discussion of national languages could in turn spawn a new article on language policy in Africa.
   2. "lingua franca" (or somtimes LWCs) is a good topic in terms of language use. It begins to look like one could tease out several overlapping and somewhat fuzzy frames: official languages, national languages, regional languages (seems to me that this is used in Democratic Republic of the Congo), lingua francas, cross-border languages, mother tongues...
   3. Statistics in a measured dose would be useful. IOW, how to choose some essential ones so as not to overwhelm readers. One problematic issue when you start to discuss language statistics in Africa (although not prominently discussed these days) is how many African languages there are. Yes, Ethnologue with very good research but also very "splitter" methodology, tells us over 2000, but many of those are highly interintelligible groups of tongues that other ("lumper") scholars might classify as dialects (see Lumpers and splitters).
4. This point leads me to think that this article could become more of a summary/introduction not only for existing articles on languages and language families etc., but also to a set of articles on issues like language policy (mentioned above), communication in African multilingual contexts, and others.
5. There could be a section on interesting facts, and indeed there are some features of African languages in their diversity, that are of interest to linguists. On the other hand, such an approach should not treat African languages as oddities.

Hope this furthers the discussion. --A12n 12:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC) fredrick douglass

Colonial Languages?

Without falling into the trap of overt political correctness, I propose dumping the rather offensive split about 'colonial languages'. Firstly, a discussion of the role of these 'dirty' 'white' languages is important, and they should not be dismissed with a 'Besides...'. Secondly, there is some obvious hypocrisy in dismissing Afrikaans, a language which, though offensively white in some sense (though most of its speakers are not), at least developed in Africa, while including Arabic, the language of colonial slave traders, eunuch-makers and jihadists from the Arabian peninsula, a region which, if my atlas is younger than the current geological era, is still not in Africa. Afrikaans, it could be argued, developed at least partly like Swahili, with native Khoi, etc., developing the language in union with the Dutch settlers - the only difference being, it seems, that the Arab traders who catalysed the development of Swahili fail to fall in the most offensive group. After all, this most offensive group has a couple of million representatives in Africa, who almost count as human. Message: though it is perhaps inevitable to a degree, racial hypocrisy of a leftist kind seems to have infected the article. A more objective representation could be in order. I suggest that the list either incorporates all the 'colonial' languages fairly, or excludes Arabic as a non-indigenous language too, while including Afrikaans. That would at least be consistent. After all, English is also not just a superficial language in Africa - there are a couple of million first language speakers who have lived in Africa all of their lives, in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya... and similarly for other 'colonial' languages. They do exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.83.99 (talk) 16:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Sober

The only sober classification of African languages is that of Tucker and Bryan, published in 1956 and 1966. They use about 50 classes, such as the Kru class in West Africa and the Nilotic class in East Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.108.96 (talk) 13:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

500 years

Talk about Indo-European languages' arrival in Africa 500 years ago is a sign that Greek in North Africa has been overlooked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.109.137 (talk) 13:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC) See Ancient Libya, where it is noted that Greek was spoken in North Africa from 630 B.C. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.36.93 (talk) 14:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

The article Madagascar says that Malayan languages might have appeared as

early as 200 A.D. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.36.93 (talk) 14:50, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

1983

Greenberg's alleged "pan-African" features are found only in small parts of Africa or are found elsewhere, outside Africa. The linked articles note that implosives, labial-velar stops, prenasalized consonants and clicks all occur outside Africa. Admittedly, clicks are very rare outside Africa.

Input requested for Wikimedia strategic planning process

Hi everyone, as you all may know Wikimeida is in the midst of its strategic planning process (see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for more information). As part of this process, I have been developing a fact base on Sub-Saharan African languages and their Wikipedias. The purpose of this fact base is to help the Wikimedia community understand the importance of these languages as they develop strategies to expand the reach of Wikimedia worldwide as well as to discuss the specific barriers to growth of these language projects. If any of you are also editors of any of the Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias, I would really appreciate it if you took some time to look at what I've put together and make any changes or additions that you thought were appropriate. It would be especially great if anyone had some thoughts or ideas to add to the section on barriers to growth Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias. I want to make sure that we have the most accurate information possible to inform the strategic plan as it is developed. This is the link http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reach/Regional_Analysis/Sub-Saharan_Africa Thanks!!!! Sarah476 (talk) 22:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

More Amharic speakers

The figures for the number of Amharic speakers is definitely out of date and too low. There are about 85 million people in Ethiopia today, at least 30% are native Amharic speakers, and at least another 30% (everyone with an education or living in towns and cities) speak Amharic as a second language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmus Sonderriis (talk • contribs) 16:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Map

I returned to the old map. It's cartoonish, but at least it's obviously cartoonish. The new map is just wrong: Khartoum is uninhabited, the only languages in N Sudan are Nubian and Beja, etc. It some cases it's due to bad copy: the Egyptian population has been moved from the Nile to the open desert. But in other cases the original map is worse: Madagascar is largely uninhabited, for example, but the western Sahara is inhabited. Best IMO to stick to the old map until we can create something decent. — kwami (talk) 02:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Language families

In my understanding, the major non-Bantu language phylum in Southern Africa is commonly referred to as Khoisan, whereas this article uses Khoe. The broader Khoisan family is sometimes called Khoesan, but even in this instance, the link should be to the phylum rather than the Khoe sub-brach. 94.174.122.25 (talk) 16:49, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The Khoe languages article seems to answer your questions. Greenman (talk) 17:38, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

"six traditional families"

There are several types of problems with naming "six traditional language families represented in Africa":

1. Khoi-San, not necessarily "a family" at all, more like a large bin for "other languages"
2. Bantu vs. Niger Congo A: these "two families" are actually one branch and one "other" category within a single family
3. Nilo-Saharan may or may not be a single family, but it would certainly make more sense to break this down than to break down Niger-Congo into "Bantu vs. non-Bantu"
4. Afro-Asiatic, this is actually a family, but it is not "represented in Africa" alone, viz., Semitic is intrusive to Africa (a) about 1000 BC (South Semitic) and again around 700 AD (Arabic). These are not "African languages" in the narrow sense
5. Malagasy is intrusive to Madagascar (and not even to Africa proper), say, in the early centuries AD, and is really a Southeast Asian language
6. If Semitic and Malagasy are "African languages" simply by virtue of being spoken there today, then, so is Indo-European (Afrikaans), intrusive from Europe. Treating Afrikaans as somehow "more intrusive" than Arabic would be a rather dodgy example of "Eurocentrism" (it cannot be African because it came from Europe? But Arabic can, because it came from Asia?)

--dab (𒁳) 14:12, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

as usual, people started edit-warring without bothering to recognize the comments made on talk. I have no problem with describing Afro-Asiatic as "a language family of Africa", as long as it is understood that this doesn't mean it is exclusive to Africa. Same goes for Austronesian and Indo-European. Afro-Asiatic is different from Austronesian and Indo-European insasmuch as it has branches which are exclusive to Africa (viz. Cushitic, Chadic, Berber). These branches are indeed "language families of Africa" in the more narrow sense, just like Nilo-Saharan, Khoi-San and Niger-Congo, i.e. families which are exclusive to Africa. What I was trying to express in the map legend is that Semitic is known to be intrusive to Africa, while the other branches of AA are not. Semitic is intrusive to Africa even if the AA Urheimat was in Africa: everyone came from Africa ultimately. The point is that Proto-Semitic developed in Asia, even if its predecessor, Proto-Afro-Asiatic, may or may not have developed in Africa. --dab (𒁳) 09:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Well that's the thing, the Semitic homeland itself is debated between the Ethiopian region and Western Asia. If it's captioned that Semitic as a whole is intrusive to Africa from Asia (rather than having evolved in situ), that's essentially equivalent to stating that the Semitic phylum itself originated in Asia. Singling out Semitic as intrusive likewise suggests that none of the other branches of Afro-Asiatic could also have been introduced to Africa from Asia. This, by consequence, rules out the Asian origin hypothesis for Proto-Afro-Asiatic. To remove any doubt as to what is meant, the caption should perhaps therefore simply indicate that Arabic is intrusive to Africa. This is also consistent with the map itself, which shows Arabic. Middayexpress (talk) 14:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Also, juxtaposing Niger-Congo's Bantu subgroup beside the major families seems to at a glance give the impression that it is a major family of its own. Linking instead again to Niger-Congo (as done in the map), and parenthetically noting that Bantu is Niger-Congo's "largest branch" or something to that effect (i.e. explaining the ostensible reason as to why Bantu has been highlighted in the map as "Niger Congo B") should resolve this ambiguity. Middayexpress (talk) 14:43, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

As of now (12/15/19), and since at least as far back as 10/18/19, the article starts with "The languages of Africa are divided into six major language families" but this followed by only 5 bulleted families. I have no idea how many there are, but for now I'm changing 'six' to 'five' for consistency. If anyone knows better, please edit.Niccast (talk) 02:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Afro-asiatic language is at best a hypothesis

The 'afro-asiatic language group' is a topic of debate among different schools of linguistics. I thought Wikipedia was only to publish established facts and not topics that are still under academic/scholarly debate? Help me understand. I raise this concern because the african language map appears to be inaccurate under strict scientific scrutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.104.35.83 (talk) 21:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the Afro-Asiatic family is quite well-established (c.f. [3]). It's Khoisan that's uncertain. Middayexpress (talk) 14:41, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

The inclusion of Berber languages

In the section on Number of Speakers, I earlier added the language Shilha, gave the number of speakers as 14.000.000 as according to ethnologue and listed it as an official language in Morocco, per their constitution which has Berber as one of their official languages. Now the problem is that someone else has added Berber to the list, and changed Shilha to not being official anywhere. This is problematic because Berber is arguably group of languages, and not one single language. Shilha is perhaps the largest berber language in Morocco (though not close to 14.000.000 in that country), but their official languages do not include a specific Berber language. Not sure what to do. I would like to show that Berber languages have official status in Morocco, but I'm hesitant to add a language to the list that does not have a calculated number of speakers etc. For now, I'll start by removing the newly added languages with less than a million native speakers, but I need advice on the Berber-thing. --TheEsb (talk) 22:37, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Updated dead link - Same content, New URL

Hi,

I am updating this deadlink: 25 ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20120502204211/http://www.bbportuguese.com/the-future-of-portuguese.html

Our previous website BBPortuguese.com was merged into TheTranslationCompany.com, so I have replaced the web.archive.org page address used in the reference area of "Languages of Africa" with our new page with the very same content: https://thetranslationcompany.com/resources/language-country/portuguese-language/portuguese-language/future-portuguese.htm

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or concerns regarding this edit.

Sincerely,

Luciano Oliveira BBPortuguese & TTC Founder

Luciano.nyc (talk) 22:57, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! I only wonder, since yours is the only source I can find online: from where do you have the number 13.7 million Portuguese speakers in Africa? Sincerely TheEsb (talk) 23:18, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Sign Languages

As sign languages are proven time and time again and are without a doubt natural human languages, their inclusion in this article is paramount. Classing them in a subsection without visibility is demoting these languages, of which there are hundreds found across the continent. The opening of the article as well as the map on the right should include information on the major sign language families (Francosign, Paget Gorman Sign System, Arab Sign, &c.; "does not include sign languages"). As well, to you Soupforone sign languages as with other languages including oral and tactile are equally spoken. Without including them up front and in the intro, it is painting a false picture of the linguistic scene across Africa; in short, it is misleading to not include sign languages in equal and proper ways. --Danachos (talk) 19:04, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

A spoken language is a language produced by articulated sounds as opposed to a written language. It thus usually denotes an oral/vocal language produced through the vocal tract. The figure in the lead on the 3,000+ languages spoken natively in Africa specifically pertains to the oral/vocal languages, as do the major language families they are divided into [4]. Therefore, the sign/non-vocal language families should not be confused with the enumerated spoken language families, nor should the language isolates. This is why both are instead noted separately in the paragraph immediately below that (which is still in the lead, just not jumbled with the spoken/vocal languages). As to the map, it too pertains specifically to the spoken/vocal language families and is captioned accordingly. Spoken implies speech i.e., vocal/oral languages. Soupforone (talk) 02:06, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

The article presently says that there are plural sign languages in Tanzania. then the next paragraph speaks of a single "Tanzanian Sign Language". I hope somebody with actual knowledge can correct this for us, please. Pete unseth (talk) 20:36, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

And bambara?

Bambara? It's called a "lingua franca", so why it's not in this article?

And also wolof

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700k French speakers?

Isn't it over 100 million?--occono (talk) 04:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Flawed section "Number of speakers"?

So, Africa has about 1.216 BILLION citizens. If you add up the totals on the section "Number of speakers", it totals out to roughly maybe 300 or 400 million as a ballpark figure. What do the other billion inhabitants of Africa speak? Five thousand other languages? Mostly 100 languages and dialects? This table seems misleading and/or significantly incomplete. Any ideas how to best deal with this? Leave it as is? Move it to user space or talk space? I hope this is a constructive critique. Thanks for reading this. Michael Ten (talk) 06:01, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

New section under See Also: Colonial and migratory influences

The purpose of this was not to subordinate the languages of Africa to Africa's colonial past.

Quite the reverse: the purpose is to remind people arriving at those other articles and viewing Africa through one of those small lens that there's a larger lens available (this article here)—one which considers Africa as a whole, and not as someone else's patchwork quilt.

Very few of these articles link to Languages of Africa in their lead sections, so the normal pathway to broadening does not function in this particular context.

I'm not wedded to this. If the consensus find this more annoying that useful, you'll get no complaints from me over reversion.

But I honestly do think Africa should take pride in the big picture, and not worry about which side of these mutual references gains the upper hand, and trust that the colonial legacy of seeing this through the default lens of colonial history will someday fade (sooner rather than later, in so far as Wikipedia illuminates the path). — MaxEnt 13:02, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

What about Mali ???

There no info regarding Mali langugaes on this article Omda4wady (talk) 11:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Possible restructuring needed

See https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/gvxo6n/why_so_few_language_language_families_in_africa/fsrptbx/ ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

We will restructure the page when there are reliable sources that suggest a consensus among linguists for a different classification of African languages. Until now, there is widespread, but not universal, dissatisfaction with the currently used classification system, and there is no widely accepted alternative classification system. So we stick with the currently shown classification that is supported by currently available sources. Landroving Linguist (talk) 06:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Landroving Linguist

Following up about adding in native languages in the 'Indo-European Languages' section.

English, French Portuguese are all Indo European Languages.

Nigeria: English in Nigeria with native transmission:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-63971991

"For many middle-class Nigerians, especially in the south, English is now their mother tongue and some may not speak any local languages. This is partly a result of marriages between members of different ethnic groups, and people moving to cities, where English is the lingua franca."

https://www.cfr.org/blog/nigeria-making-its-mark-english-language#:~:text=Though%20English%20is%20the%20only,or%20some%2020%20million%20Nigerians

"There are guesses that 10 percent of the population speaks English as their first language, or some 20 million Nigerians. This means that, there are more Nigerian speakers of English as a first language than there are in Ireland, New Zealand, or Scotland, and about the same number as in Australia.

French in Africa with native transmission:

Congo: https://www.independent.co.ug/special-feature-dr-congo-home-tenth-worlds-languages/

"While some people like her speak several local languages, the upwardly mobile will often teach their children only French — or French and English."

Cameroon: https://dokumen.tips/documents/tove-final-kamerun-081101-goeteborgs-universitet-list-of-tables-table-1-numeric.html?page=43

"There is a clear change in language use from the parent generation to the generation of their children (Bitjaa Kody 2005:95). "

" As a result, there will be even less national language speakers in future, since the future parent generation will not be able to transmit a Cameroonian language to their children."

Gabon: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267327159_From_foreign_to_national_a_review_of_the_status_of_French_in_Gabon

". Furthermore, some are also learning and conceptualising French as a mother tongue or initial language, "

Portuguese with native transmission in Africa: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-angola.html

"The language is the mother tongue of 39% of the population of the country while many more speak it as a second language."

--

@Landroving Linguist All of these were cited in the article I updated, was there any reason why you deleted it?

There are more sources too on native transmissions, but these I thought were so common knowledge I didn't think it was necessary to add more sources.

Let me know thanks! IntelloFR (talk) 15:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@IntelloFR, indeed, the sources say all this and more, but you have invoked them to support only one fairly specific statement, namely that "in large cities there are increasing amounts of native speakers of Indo-European languages." So I cursorily skimmed them (it would have helped if you had provided page numbers) for statements that mention large cities, increasing populations of Indo-European language speakers, and native speakers in a way that they can be said to support the above statement. Only the source dealing with Gabon actually did that, according to my reading (not in the passage that you quote now). For inline citations it is really important that the source in fact directly supports the very claim that is made in the preceding text. Since the source on Gabon taken by itself does not allow generalizations for all of Africa, I found it necessary to remove the above statement together with all the sources. LandLing 16:29, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist

So should it be revised to:

Per research, and reporting, there are increasing numbers of native English, French, and Portuguese speakers in Nigeria, Angola, Gabon, Cameroon and the DRC.

And add the citations? Or quote those lines directly from the sources?

I feel like we are splitting hairs here.

Also for page numbers - the entire paper supports the position of French becoming a native language in Gabon. IntelloFR (talk) 16:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not splitting hairs. Whatever claim you make and support with sources - these sources need to actually say what the claim states. As far as I can tell, none of the sources (except the one on Gabon, see above) speaks of an increase in speaker numbers of the IE languages you mention. "The entire paper supports the position..." without being able to tie it down to page numbers or actual quotes amounts to synthesis on your part, which is original research. LandLing 16:44, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist

For Cameroon, per the research paper:

". There is a clear change in language use from the parent generation to the generation of their children (Bitjaa Kody 2005:95). As a result, there will be even less national language speakers in future, since the future parent generation will not be able to transmit a Cameroonian language to their children."

Does this not indicate a future increase in native speakers?

"since the future parent generation will not be able to transmit a Cameroonian language to their children." "

Meaning they will only transmit French in the future to their children? i.e When they have kids, they will speak French to them in the future, meaning the total number of French native speakers in Cameroon will increase.

Please advise your thoughts on this statement above. This is on page 43 and why it shows native transmission of French, and the increase of French in Cameroon, which is why I am confused as to why you say there is no evidence as such. IntelloFR (talk) 16:50, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The purposes of these sources is to draw conclusions - which is a summary, and traceable to those specific pages and sources. IntelloFR (talk) 16:51, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist

Also - For the World Atlas source, it clearly states:

"According to a 2014 study, nearly 71% of the population of Angola speak Portuguese. The language is the mother tongue of 39% of the population of the country while many more speak it as a second language. Portuguese is also the most spoken and sometimes the only language that is spoken by younger Angolans."

Younger generations grow up. They also have kids, meaning the future generation will increase the population of native speakers. IntelloFR (talk) 16:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist Please advise. IntelloFR (talk) 16:54, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The Angolan statements talk about heavy use of Portugues nowadays, but make no comparison to other times. So talking about an increase is inference again. LandLing 17:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The Cameroonian statements make claims about the non-transmission of Cameroonian languages. They make no claim whatsoever about IE languages. Look, when you make a claim about increasing IE speaker numbers, it is not enough to have this infered by what the texts say about other languages. LandLing 17:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist

Clearly this conversation is in regard to semantics, which seems to be a sticking point for you.

What if, in line with the semantics you prefer, use this:

"There are documented native speakers of French in Gabon, DRC, and Cameroon. There are documented native speakers of Portuguese in Angola. There are documented native speakers of English in Nigeria.'

Zero inference, Zero future tense?

Please feel free to draft a statement on the native speakers in Africa that fits your semantics as opposed to summarization.

Being from Africa, and with my dad speaking Swahili and French, and myself only learning French, I know personally this is happening on the ground but happy to play into semantics and specifics. IntelloFR (talk) 17:15, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm a linguist, so semantics are important to me. And, here's probably news to you: they are also important to Wikipedia. I actually agree with your observation that European languages are becoming more important in many African countries. I observe it myself. But for having a statement about increasing speaker numbers of IE languages in Africa we need to have a source that actually makes that claim, and for now we just don't have it. Synthesis or inference based on anything else some sources say is not allowed on Wikipedia, because they are original research. Generalizations based on what is said about Gabon are also OR. These are the rules of Wikipedia. Please acquaint yourself with what these rules about referencing say, or you will have many more frustrating experiences as an editor. LandLing 17:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@Landroving Linguist

Clearly this is going nowhere.

As a linguist, I would have assumed you would have realized I changed the focus of the statement from 'increasing amounts' to recognizing the native speakers.

In the future, perhaps using the ivory tower approach as opposed to recommending a different statement might work better, and be a little more productive.

Looking at your chat history, it is clear you have a history of antagonizing people trying to put out information as opposed to finding a solution.

Nice to see we got nowhere and had zero productivity, but I am glad in this conversation I learned you are a linguist and lack the ability to recommend solutions. IntelloFR (talk) 17:27, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

March 2024

@HJ72JH: per WP:BRD, you are meant to discuss the bold edit that was reverted (regardless of its merit). This is particularly relevant when your edit is reverted by two different editors. M.Bitton (talk) 00:39, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

HJ72JH appears to think that the article is titled "Languages spoken by Black Africans before European colonialism", but it isn't. Regardless of its Dutch provenance, the language known as Afrikaans originated in Africa and has been spoken as a native language by generations of Africans. Largoplazo (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, their refusal to communicate using any other medium than edit summaries makes it hard to understand their rationale. M.Bitton (talk) 00:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

"Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, Dutch (Afrikaans) and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level in Africa (non-exhaustive list):"

That's the beginning of the list. HJ72JH (talk) 00:51, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Your points is? M.Bitton (talk) 00:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

As it says "besides", that means the list should not include Afrikaans HJ72JH (talk) 00:53, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The list was of languages other than colonial languages. Afrikaans is a colonial language brought to Africa through colonisation and it is not an indigenous language. The article itself says that. It's like saying Québécois French and Louisiana French are indigenous to North America as they've also been there for 4 centuries HJ72JH (talk) 00:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

What makes it different from "Seychellois Creole"? M.Bitton (talk) 00:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

It's a creole and not an Indo-European language. HJ72JH (talk) 00:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

So? M.Bitton (talk) 00:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Afrikaans is a colonial language brought to Africa through colonisation and it is not an indigenous language. That's incorrect. There was no such thing as Afrikaans until the Dutch brought by settlers in South Africa evolved into it there among people who lived there. And it is the native language today of millions of Africans. Also, I haven't seen you take issue with Arabic. Largoplazo (talk) 00:58, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Quebecois French and Louisiana French did not exist until French was brought to America by French colonists and these languages developed out of it. They're still not indigenous to North America. Likewise, Afrikaans developed out of Dutch brought to Africa by colonists. It evolved in the same way, but none of these are indigenous to these regions. HJ72JH (talk) 01:01, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Again, what makes it different from Seychellois Creole? M.Bitton (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

There was no other language spoken in the Seychelles before then so it is an indigenous language. HJ72JH (talk) 01:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

As there were literally no humans until then. HJ72JH (talk) 01:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

In the Seychelles, to be specific. HJ72JH (talk) 01:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

"Indo-European languages, while not indigenous to Africa, are spoken in South Africa and Namibia(Afrikaans, English, German)" HJ72JH (talk) 00:52, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of its Dutch provenance, the language known as Afrikaans originated in Africa and has been spoken as a native language by generations of Africans Do you agree with this? M.Bitton (talk) 00:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Focus on the article. The article says "Indo-European languages, while not indigenous to Africa, are spoken in South Africa and Namibia(Afrikaans, English, German)" and then when it's showing the list that I updated it says “Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, Dutch (Afrikaans) and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level in Africa (non-exhaustive list):”

That means Afrikaans is not supposed to be included in that list. Otherwise, English, French etc. should be added to that list, too and then what's the point of the list? HJ72JH (talk) 00:59, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Focus on what I wrote. Are you suggesting the removal of "Dutch (Afrikaans)" from the sentence? M.Bitton (talk) 01:01, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

No, because it is a colonial language. The list should not include colonial languages like Afrikaans. HJ72JH (talk) 01:02, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Or it should include all colonial languages, including Afrikaans. HJ72JH (talk) 01:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Which takes us right back to the question that I asked. M.Bitton (talk) 01:04, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Quebecois French and Louisiana French did not exist until French was brought to America by French colonists and these languages developed out of it. They're still not indigenous to North America. Likewise, Afrikaans developed out of Dutch brought to Africa by colonists. It evolved in the same way, but none of these are indigenous to these regions and they're all colonial languages. HJ72JH (talk) 01:05, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Nor did Seychellois Creole, so what's your point? M.Bitton (talk) 01:06, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The point is, the list specifically does not include colonial languages (which Afrikaans is), and so the list should either not include Afrikaans or include all the colonial languages present in Africa. HJ72JH (talk) 01:09, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

It includes "Seychellois Creole". M.Bitton (talk) 01:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

There was no other language spoken in the Seychelles before then so it is an indigenous language. HJ72JH (talk) 01:12, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

You're contradicting yourself. In any case, now that you removed the content again (despite knowing that two editors disagree with you), you left me with no choice but to report you. M.Bitton (talk) 01:16, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I did not contradict myself at any point. HJ72JH (talk) 01:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

There were and are indigenous languages in South Africa spoken before and after colonisation, Afrikaans is not an indigenous language of South Africa and Seychelles Creole has nothing to do with this. HJ72JH (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)