[HN Gopher] How Swahili became Africa's most spoken language
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How Swahili became Africa's most spoken language
Author : Tomte
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-03-03 17:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| AdamN wrote:
| I'm not sure how true this article is, hopefully some others in
| Africa can speak to their personal experiences.
|
| For me, when I lived in Kenya English was the lingua franca for
| official/business activity. Some older professional Kenyans I
| knew learned Swahili only after learning English (and their
| mother language, Luo for instance). On the street, Swahili was
| standard.
|
| The Tanzanians I met however, considered Nairobi Swahili not even
| 'real' Swahili and more of a mish-mash for disparate speakers who
| might otherwise choose their mother tongue when possible.
|
| And then there's Sheng - a creole that is an even further
| evolution from Swahili and various other languages.
| grecy wrote:
| I spent 3 years driving 54,000miles around the coastline
| through 35 countries. [1]
|
| In my experience, Swahili wasn't widely spoken, really only in
| a region of East Africa around Uganda/Kenya/Tanzania - which I
| also realized many foreigners come to think of as "Africa"
| because that's where they go on safari. It was great to drive
| from Tanzania into Burundi, or Ethiopia into Djibouti and not
| see a single foreigner for a month.
|
| Certainly French is the language of the West Coast and of many
| hundreds of millions of people. I'm guessing if it also had
| Nigeria's 200million it would be the dominant language on the
| continent.
|
| English, again, is common in the places tourists frequent, but
| otherwise not widespread outside the capital cities.
|
| The vast majority of people even in very, very remote mud hut
| communities spoke at least two languages. 3+ was very common.
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/c/theroadchoseme
| Bostonian wrote:
| Wouldn't Africa be better off if English became the most spoken
| language? There are more resources, technical and otherwise,
| available in English than Swahili. I wonder what the income
| effect of knowing English is for an Indian, compared to someone
| who only knows Hindi. I'd guess that it's significant.
| bnralt wrote:
| If you look at the numbers, it seems like English is the most
| spoken language in Africa. It's also the official language of
| the most populous African nation (Nigeria).
| Semaphor wrote:
| In South Africa, English is the most spoken language (of their
| 11 official ones). It's the one almost everyone understands,
| brown, black, white. But people still have their own languages.
| Afrikaans, all the former tribal languages, and probably more I
| don't know about.
|
| My experience is rather narrow, but besides some very young
| (pre 1st grade) children who only spoke their tribal language
| (Request: If anyone is offering online tutoring in Sesotho, I'd
| love to get contacted), I never encountered anyone who didn't
| speak English.
| ngc248 wrote:
| There are 22 official languages in India and there is no
| national language. In most schools in most cities it is english
| first (at home anyways you would be speaking your mother
| tongue)
|
| >>> English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much
| of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount
| of national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea,
| China, etc developed through their own languages.
|
| No just national pride is not enough to develop. "development"
| is a complex issue which can't be boiled down to one or two
| reasons.
| alangibson wrote:
| > English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much
| of africa is so poor and undeveloped.
|
| This makes no sense. The USA primarily speaks the language of
| a country an ocean away that they fought multiple wars
| against.
| kccqzy wrote:
| A language encodes so much of a people's culture and tradition
| that giving it up is not a choice to be made lightly. Don't
| succumb to linguistic imperialism.
| smabie wrote:
| Of course it would be better off, but you can say that for a
| lot of places / a lot of languages.
|
| I lived in Tanzania for a couple years and learned a bit of
| swahili and the lack of online resources is a huge barrier for
| education. If you only know Swahili, the world is _very_ small.
| qiskit wrote:
| > Wouldn't Africa be better off if English became the most
| spoken language?
|
| No. Superficially it may seem like it but practically it would
| stagnate their native languages and dumb down the population.
|
| > There are more resources, technical and otherwise, available
| in English than Swahili.
|
| Yes there is. But the exercise of translating resources to your
| own language helps advance a language and a peoples. A few days
| ago we had a submission about how some of the translators of
| goethe became some of the best english writers.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30523802
|
| All you have to do is look at the resurgence of europe and
| european culture as europe "abandoned" latin in favor of the
| native languages. We wouldn't have shakespeare without the push
| towards linguistic nationalism - the move to translate bible,
| etc to one's own native language.
|
| > I wonder what the income effect of knowing English is for an
| Indian, compared to someone who only knows Hindi. I'd guess
| that it's significant.
|
| It depends on whether india supports an english-first system or
| hindi first system. Besides only a small fraction of jobs
| within each country requires english.
|
| English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much of
| africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy amount of
| national pride to develop your country. Japan, South Korea,
| China, etc developed through their own languages.
|
| Doesn't mean I think everyone should abandon english. Learn
| what you want, but foster and develop your own languages.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| > English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much
| of africa is so poor and undeveloped. You need a healthy
| amount of national pride to develop your country. Japan,
| South Korea, China, etc developed through their own
| languages.
|
| You're totally cherry picking your examples, to the point
| that no one can take what you wrote seriously at all.
| Afghanistan has their own language, Amazon tribes even have
| their own language...how are those countries/areas doing
| right now?
| austincheney wrote:
| In all fairness linguistic nationalism killed many regional
| languages. The European regional languages that survived were
| only due to either geographic isolation or much higher than
| average population density.
| digisign wrote:
| The suggestion wasn't to abandon native languages, it was to
| prefer English over Swahili as a 'lingua-franca' across
| regions.
| qiskit wrote:
| The suggestion was to demote the native language in favor
| of english since english had the knowledge. My point was to
| elevate the native language by bringing that knowledge (
| english, arabic, russian, chinese, french, etc ) into your
| native language.
|
| > it was to prefer English over Swahili as a 'lingua-
| franca' across regions.
|
| That's what I'm against. And it's a good thing england
| didn't prefer french ( lingua-franca ) over its native
| language or we'd all be speaking french. It's a good thing
| descartes was translated into english rather than everyone
| speaking french. From a practical standpoint, it just makes
| sense to prioritize your native language.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| > dumb down the population.
|
| Got any stats or studies that prove this otherwise
| ridiculously naive statement?
| rory wrote:
| > English dependence can be viewed as why india and so much
| of africa is so poor and undeveloped.
|
| That seems like a ridiculous assertion. How about Ireland?
| daemoens wrote:
| Swahili became the largest language over decades . Also this is
| only for central/east Africa not the entire continent.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Africa is really huge. 1.4 billion people, Cape Town is about
| as close to Cairo as New York is to Rio de Janeiro.
|
| So I mean maybe, but given the above that's a bit of a
| challenge.
| g8oz wrote:
| "African Union adopts Swahili as an official working language"
| https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/african-union-adopts-swahili...
|
| "According to the UN, the language had its origins in East
| Africa, and Swahili speakers are spread over more than 14
| countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the
| Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia,
| Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Comoros, and as far as Oman and Yemen
| in the Middle East.
|
| Southern African countries such as South Africa and Botswana have
| introduced it in schools, while Namibia and others are
| considering doing so."
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