Sunday, February 29, 2004

Had an interesting exchange re the Gutenberg Project's interest in including works in African languages in its collection of e-books. I've long thought that weblishing older published material in various African languages, such as the old Classiques Africaines series, would be an easy way to get some good quality content on the web. This may seem somewhat far from applications related to development, the long-term focus of Bisharat (link at left, under "Other Links, Work"), but in fact any quality African language material in my opinion helps achieve a kind of "critical mass" making the addition of other temporary, current and targeted material easier. In the case of some of this material, it may also serve to help set the high-end standard for web-content in some languages.

There's a fair amount, from my recollection of some bibliographic work, but mostly it's tucked away in university libraries in the north, inaccessible in any form on the continent.

This all seems to be the result of connections made by Djilali Benamrane, formerly of UNDP, with a very positive response from Michael Hart, the director of Gutenberg. More on this later, hopefully.

The NYTimes Magazine had a piece yesterday on disappearing languages, "Say no more." I posted the following quick reaction on a small MSN list on which the link was posted, Language and Development (the link was also posted later on ILAT). If you understand Bambara, the first line attempts to play off the article title "Say no more":

N'ka kan ka kuma kelen fɔ...

But first, thanks for this article, which I had not seen.

We hear a lot about disappearing languages, those that have 6 speakers like Kawesqar, some with 30-some speakers others with a few hundred. These are important matters, but most of us cannot do much directly.

At the same time I'm convinced that there are dangerous processes at play for languages that have tens or hundreds of thousands, or even 1 or 2 million. When languages are not taught at school, when people don't bother to teach the mother tongue to their children, when the popular idea is that the indigenous languages are somehow inferior, then the writing is on the wall. In the meantime, long before language extinction becomes a concern, I think there is a certain amount of "language impoverishment." I've known native speakers of Bambara and Fulfulde who have baldly stated that there is no word for such-and-such in their language, when in fact I as a language learner know that there is one or more. Two examples:

1. A Bambara speaker, telling me that Bambara was not suited for science, only "dialogue" gave as an example that there is no word for research ("recherche" in French, the language he was comparing it to) - but in fact one can say (correct me if I'm wrong!)
ɲini, literally to look for, or sɛgɛsɛgɛli, which has the sense of really getting to the bottom of things.

2. A Fulfulde speaker who didn't know the word for "blind person" -
bumɗo - but instead only knew how to say neɗɗo mo yiyataa - person who can't see.

3. A Hausa agricultural researcher in Niger who spoke impeccable French, but mastered her first language less well than an American colleague who had spent 3 years in the country.

Many times I've chatted with people who've been through the formal schooling system (almost all in Africa use only English or French) who have remarked how their elders could talk above their heads in their common maternal language.

It seems that this is a process happening all over. As an outsider looking at it, it is tragic (the consequences of colonization) and puzzling. Many African languages are numerically as important as official languages in Europe like Dutch, Danish, Catalan, and many in East Europe, but are not used in education. There are probably more webpages in Basque or Welsh than in any African language. Etc.

There are a lot of disadvantages Africa and its socio-economies, that is to be sure, but ultimately it's up to Africans to decide about aspects of language and culture on the continent.

It may be helpful to know that there are ways to revitalize African languages and keep the usefulness of the international languages. Bilingual education - at home, in the community, and in school - has been shown to benefit children. And there is international interest in bolstering education in Africa, which African authorities can direct toward approaches that include use of children's first languages.

All that said, there are certainly minority languages in Africa that are in danger of disappearing. Some of this in Africa as elsewhere is ultimately unavoidable. But a beginning point to dealing with this part of the situation is to understand how many such languages there are, and before that even, to understand what is a separate language and what is a dialect of a larger language.

N'y'a sɔrɔ yan, n'y'a bila yen...

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