Extended Latin in Lonely Planet's Africa Phrasebook

Among phrasebooks for African languages, there are some that focus on individual languages - Amharic for English speakers¹ and Bambara for German speakers,² for example, are in my collection - and some that cover several languages. Among the latter, my personal favorite has Wolof, Fula, and Manding (actually Bambara) for English and French speakers, and has the African languages in their correct orthographies.³

Berlitz, which is famous in this category of publications, first published in 1996 an African Phrase Book with Arabic, French, Hausa, Malagasy, Portuguese, Shona, Swahili, Tswana, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu for English speakers.⁴

This post, however, will focus on what appears to be the most recently published multilingual African phrase book, Lonely Planet's 2013 Africa Phrasebook & Dictionary (2nd edition), with particular attention to Hausa, Wolof, and Yoruba, which are normally written in extended Latin alphabets.

Lonely Planet's publication covers 13 languages, and a slightly different selection than Berlitz: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, French, Hausa, Malagasy, Portuguese, Shona, Swahili, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu.⁵ It is apparently in revision for a new edition due out in mid-2018.

What is extended Latin?

Extended Latin is a technical term from Unicode (characters in several blocks of characters beyond the basic Latin we use in English), but it basically refers to modified letters and some letters with accents (diacritics) to indicate a wide range of sounds that are either not used or don't distinguish meaning in West European languages like English or French.⁶ Many of these are important in writing some African languages and have been adopted in standard orthographies in Africa since the 1960s, or in some cases earlier. A sampling of extended Latin characters with some languages they are used in include:

• ɓ and ɗ in both Hausa and Fula
• ɛ and ɔ in Bambara, Lingala, and many others
• ọ and some other "subdot" letters in Yoruba and Igbo
• ŋ in many languages from Wolof to Dinka (and some outside of Africa)

Such extended Latin characters and diacritics presented problems on older computer systems because of limitations on font encoding, but since Unicode became standard some years ago, these characters (and non-Latin scripts) are readily displayed.

Nevertheless, some publishers and webmasters don't seem to have completely caught up. Lonely Planet seems like an example. The extended Latin script of Yoruba, including subdots and tone marks, appears to be all correct, and they seem to have had no problem with the more difficult non-Latin scripts for Arabic and Amharic. But Hausa and Wolof do not fully conform with standard usage in the countries where they are most spoken (Nigeria and Senegal, respectively, although both are cross-border languages spoken in other countries). In these cases, Lonely Planet may have repeated non-standard usage by earlier Berlitz publications (checking).

Lonely Planet layout

A company publishing phrase books will follow a set format, which facilitates readers finding the right information in different languages - whether these are in separate books, or sections of one book as in this case.

In its Africa Phrasebook, Lonely Planet introduces the pronunciation for a language in a page at the beginning of the section on it (as in the image on the left from the Hausa section).

From what I can tell, the orthographies used for most of the languages in the book are correct.  Again I am focusing here on three languages written with extended Latin orthographies that have been and sometimes still are mishandled in print and on the web.

Hausa

Hausa's consonant system includes some sounds (implosive b & d, and ejective k & y) that are not conveyed by the traditional Latin alphabet. In the standard Latin-based "Boko" orthography, these are denoted by "hooked" consonants -  ɓ, ɗ, and ƙ - plus either 'y (in Nigeria) or ƴ (in Niger). There is also a strong ʦ sound that is represented by the digraph ts (much like the sh digraph represents a sound familiar to English speakers).

In its presentation of Hausa, Lonely Planet uses letter combinations with apostrophes in its pronunciation guide to denote these 4 consonants, and the ts digraph. However it also uses these rather than the Boko hooked consonants in the Hausa text. (As a rule the pronunciation guide includes word/phrase in the language, how to pronounce the word/phrase, and the English meaning.) In the blow closer look at the pronunciation page for Hausa I have circled in red their symbols and added the standard characters after (the 'y and ƴ are alternatives, as indicated above).

It is not clear why Lonely Planet decided to use these non-standard "apostrophied" combinations for the Hausa text in a 2013 publication. Their parallel use for pronunciation in a publication like this, on the other hand, can be argued. (Worth noting that Xhosa, which is included in the phrasebook, also has an implosive b and ejective k - but while these are not distinguished in its current orthography, providing a pronunciation guide for them using b' and k' is certainly helpful.)

There is certainly no technical reason today not to use the hooked consonants in Hausa text. Using apostrophes is the same workaround for Hausa found in earlier Berlitz phrase books (not clear if there is a connection). But even in pre-Unicode days, typesetters had ways to include modified letters in text (see also the below comments about Yoruba in this same phrasebook). The hooked letters are distinct even in small print, though more so in some typefaces than others.

Points in its favor: Lonely Planet does appear to use the correct Boko orthography apart from the apostrophied characters; and the latter are better than the "ASCIIfied" approach commented on previously in this blog (a topic to be revisited later).

Wolof

With one exception, Lonely Planet's Africa Phrasebook seems to use the correct Wolof orthography alongside its own pronunciation system. That is indicating the velar n with ng rather than ŋ (the letter "eng").

Part of the problem in using the ng in this way is that this digraph also is pronounced as two letters in quick sequence - technically a "prenasalized" g (basically like the ng in mango in English, or in the Wolof example mangi that I circled in red on the pronunciation page above). The whole reason for the ŋ letter was to accommodate the "velar" n (ng as in ring) as distinguished from the n+g combination. In Wolof, as in many West African languages (but not Hausa or Yoruba), ng and ŋ are not the same, so it is not helpful for a phrase book to avoid the distinction.

For example, in the glossary includes a Wolof word spelled as ngemb (diaper, nappy). The pronunciation guide uses the same spelling, so one is left to determine if that is meant to be "n-gemb" or "ŋemb." For an English speaker, the velar n in initial position is unfamiliar, and because Lonely Planet doesn't avail itself of the Wolof ŋ to disambiguate pronunciation in such situations, the user is left to guess. Although the letter ŋ is also new to most users, it is easily explained and then becomes a new tool in understanding this small but not unimportant part of Wolof phonetics.

For info: The only review I found on Lonely Planet's Africa Phrasebook was a short one on the Wolof section of the first edition, in the Janga Wolof blog.

Yoruba

One of the most complex Latin orthographies in Africa is that of Yoruba. The writing system dating back to Samuel Ajayi Crowther uses marks below three letters - ẹ, ọ, and ṣ - to distinguish open and closed e and o, and s from sh. The classic form of the marks is a small vertical line, but these days commonly a dot under or "subdot" is used (also in Igbo and some other languages of southern Nigeria). And as a tonal language, it also features tonal marks over vowels. In African Languages in a Digital Age, I called this a "category 4" Latin orthography - the most complex - since it uses extended Latin characters plus additional diacritics (in the same classification system, the standard orthographies of Hausa and Wolof are "category 3").

In this section, Lonely Planet has on the one hand given words and phrases in what appears to be the correct Yoruba orthography, including subdot characters and tone marks, and on the other hand used their own system to explain pronunciation (per the page pictured below). Their bridge between the two is to tell users "not to worry" about the "range of accent marks" above and below the letters.

As a practical approach, this works for the intended audience and purpose. As in the Amharic and Arabic sections, most readers will not make use of text in a scripts they don't read, but having it makes it available for learning, and also for the eventuality one needs to show the text to a person one is trying to communicate with in the other language.

Conclusions

I wasn't sure what to expect before looking at these three sections. In the Hausa and Wolof sections I saw somewhat familiar problems - shortcuts on special characters within otherwise solid efforts.

These may have been the result of lack of information, but that wouldn't be much excuse given how much is out on the web and in print on and in these languages. Indeed, Lonely Planet's success (as it looks to me) with the Yoruba section of its phrasebook - not to mention its presentation of two sections in the more complex scripts used for Amharic and Arabic - shows that they should have no trouble with other complex writing systems.

Or it could have been a determination that some details of orthographies involving modified letters were somehow unimportant - an attitude I've encountered with regard to African languages in other circumstances (which brings to mind a previous post on this blog about how scholars treat "official orthographies"). This would be problematic and ultimately self-defeating.

There are only up sides to using the official standard orthography for a language especially if you are also providing pronunciation guides. Hopefully the next edition of Lonely Planet's Africa Phrasebook will do for extended Latin in Hausa and Wolof what the current edition did for Yoruba.

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1. Alem Eshetu, Amharic for Foreign Beginners, of which there are several editions - latest seems to be 6th ed., 2007.
2. Tim Hentschel, Bambara für Mali - Wort für Wort, Reise Know How, Bielefeld, 2009. The Bambara text in this book is in the official Latin orthography.
3. Pathé Diagne, ed. Manuel de conversation - Wolof/Francais/English, Mandeng/Francais/English, Pulaar/Francais/English - Conversation hand-book, Sankoré, Dakar, 1978.
4. There are at least two editions of the Berlitz phrasebook. In addition to the 1996 publication, another edition came out in 2005.
5. The first edition was published in 2007. It apparently had the same 13 languages covered in the second edition.
6. That's admittedly a bit of an oversimplification.

Dissertations written in African languages

A recent news item on a doctoral dissertation written in Xhosa at Rhodes University by Hleze Kunju brings up the question: How many dissertations have been written in what African languages?¹ This post won't provide a definitive answer, but will point to some information² in the hopes of eliciting some responses and developing a more complete picture.

First, Dr. Kunju's dissertation, entitled "IsiXhosa ulwimi lwabantu abangesosininzi eZimbabwe: ukuphila nokulondolozwa kwaso," is the first PhD thesis in Xhosa at Rhodes. It considers a Xhosa community in present day Zimbabwe that had responded to incentives given (but not followed through on) by Cecil Rhodes, The news article describes this work as "'a milestone' for Xhosa academic writing and a glimmer of hope in the quest for a decolonised and transformed education system in [South Africa]."

The same article mentions that seven other doctoral students at Rhodes have done their writing in African languages, without giving more details.

This story brought to mind one from last decade where Gatua wa Mbugwa wrote his PhD dissertation in plant science at the University of Wyoming in 2008 in both Gikuyu and Engish (abstract in English here). This was after doing the same with his master's thesis at Cornell University - writing in Gikuyu and translating into English. These were remarkable efforts, praised as an inspiring model by author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who said that Dr. wa Mbugwa "almost single-handedly invented scientific Gikuyu language, thus proving that scientific research can be reported in an African Language without loss of scientific content and value."


There are other examples. In South Africa again, for instance, Zinhle Nkosi wrote her 2011 dissertation at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Zulu. It was about the teaching of Zulu at the primary school level, and the work on it "meant finding the right terms to describe research methodology and theories of language and learning." Dr. Nkosi subsequently supervised master's students writing their theses in Zulu.

First PhD dissertation in Yoruba in 1990

In Nigeria, there have apparently been doctoral dissertations written in Yoruba, going back to the first one at Obafemi Awolowo University, Department of African Languages and Literatures in 1990 (according to Prof. Lawrence Adewole on his Yoruba for Academic Purpose blog). Master's theses go back to 1981, As of 2015, there had been five PhD dissertations written in Yoruba at that institution. It is interesting that this was evidently the result of a deliberate departmental policy.

I do not at this time know whether similar policies have been implemented at other institutions in Nigeria or dissertations written in other Nigerian languages. Prof. Adewole's survey of published works and dissertations in Yoruba³ would have more on what has been done in that language (I don't presently have access to the book).

It has been suggested that there have been dissertations and theses written in Hausa at universities in northern Nigeria, but I have seen no references. In terms of time scale, a bibliography of doctoral dissertations in 1946-76 shows only English titles,⁴ so perhaps we are looking only at the period since 1976 for work in Nigerian languages?

Swahili established in academia

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, given the extent of use of Swahili and its policy support by several governments in East Africa for decades, this language is fairly widely used in academic writing. A 2003 discussion of Swahili academic style⁵ mentions among the categories of writing consulted, "Dissertations submitted to the Swahili Departments of various Universities in East and Central Africa." (Note the apparent limitation in terms of discipline.)

I have no information on the first PhD dissertation in Swahili, though that may go back a number of years. Nor did I find any figures on the numbers of theses written in this language, but it must be significant.

Few PhD dissertations, but many master's theses in Amharic

Ethiopia, one of the two countries on the continent never to be colonized and one of the few to have an indigenous language in an official role - Amharic - is a case where one might expect to see doctoral theses in that language. Indeed there are evidently a few PhD dissertations in Amharic, but apparently a fair number of master's theses. See for example a list of theses in Amharic Language, Literature, and Folklore at Addis Ababa University.

Some dissertations have gone beyond language itself, such as one entitled "ባህልና ልማት በበርታ ብሔረሰብ" ("Culture and Development in the Berta Ethnic Group").

Other languages in other countries

It may be that no Francophone university in West Africa has any examples of doctoral dissertations written in an African language. I had thought that maybe Guinea during the Sékou Touré years might have some examples, but apparently universities there did not offer doctoral degrees and master's theses were in French. One apparent innovation in Guinea at the time was that theses had abstracts in one or another national language - something that might be considered at universities elsewhere on the continent today.

That leaves many languages and countries on the continent unaccounted for, so hopefully I can return to this topic with more complete information.

Summary

The typical pattern, such as emerges from the very limited survey above, is for dissertations and theses in African languages to be accepted only in departments of African languages and literature, and for there to be some production of master’s theses in an African language before any dissertation. However, there are exceptions.

The first two examples above, concerning dissertations about history and plant science, are examples of using African languages for complex subjects other than the languages themselves, and their use or teaching, The scholars involved found an advantage to writing in their first language and in so doing innovated in those languages - Xhosa and Gikuyu - as well as in their respective academic fields. These examples stand out, but as the dissertation title in Amharic mentioned above indicates, they are not unique.

So, as we develop a list of dissertations in African languages, particular attention should be paid to the range of disciplines concerned.

Also important to track are university and departmental policies on use of African languages in writing theses - changing to permit this, such as at Rhodes University, or actually encouraging such writing, such as at Obafemi Awolowo University.

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1. I have not included Arabic in this analysis, since it is a widely used international language.
2. Thanks to Lawrence Adewole, Solomon Atnafu, John Philips, Charles Riley, and Valentin Vydrine for their willingness to share information they have. I take full responsibility for any innacuracies in this post, however.
3. L.O. Adewole. 1987. The Yoruba Language: Published Works and Doctoral Dissertations, 1843-1986. Hamburg: Helmut Burke Verlag. (Review available online.)
4. E.S. Muogilim. 1982. "Nigerian Education: A Classified Bibliography of Doctoral Dissertations , 1946-1976." A Current Bibliography on African Affairs Vol. 14, Issue 3.
5. H.J.M Mwansanko. 2003. "Swahili in Academic Writing." Nordic Journal of African Studies 12(3): 265–276.

Nelson Mandela and African languages

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. (Nelson Mandela)

As South Africa, and indeed the world, mourns the passing of Nelson Mandela, a remarkable leader who the New York Times called the "Peaceful Liberator of a Torn South Africa," here is a quick look at his legacy as concerns languages in Africa. Actually a very quick look, as I don't personally know much on the topic  and find relatively little on line, other than the well-known quote above and some details below (so hopefully more information can be filled in via comments or a future post).

Mandela's first language was Xhosa, an Nguni language very close to Zulu, which he apparently also spoke. He learned English in school, and it was in school where his biography says he met his first non-Xhosa friend, a Sesotho speaker. Later he learned Afrikaans while a prisoner on Robben Island. It seems Mandela was as much a product of a multilingual society as he was of a multiracial and multiethnic one..

The process* leading to the inclusion in the new constitution of all 11 of South Africa's main languages as "official" happened during the country's transition to majority rule. While I don't find any discussion of Mandela's direct involvement in that process, a fellow former prisoner at Robben Island who he knew well - Neville Alexander - was prominent in it. I'm not sure how South Africans would see it, but from afar, it seems that the officially multilingual policy of the country is part of Mandela's legacy.

Other thoughts...

A couple of other thoughts not related specifically to language upon reflecting about aspects of Nelson Mandela's legacy. First, the NY Times obit (referenced above) has this passage and quote in the context of discussing leadership style:

In his autobiography, Mr. Mandela recalled eavesdropping on the endless consensus-seeking deliberations of the tribal council and noticing that the chief worked "like a shepherd."
"He stays behind the flock," he continued, "letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind."

Reading the analogy, I am reminded on a literal level about a dismissive comment about Fulani pastoralists I heard from some American development experts while in Mali in the 1980s - to the effect that the herders spent their lives looking at the rear ends of cattle. There are a lot of problems with a statement like that of course (misunderstanding of pastoralism and herd behavior, attitudes regarding development,etc.), but taking it all back to the level of analogy and leadership, it has me thinking about how outsiders (primarily Westerners) conceive of or misunderstand community leadership and decision-making processes, not only in Africa but also in Asia.

Second, I came across an article about how in April 1994, the then new South African president Mandela surprised the outgoing president DeKlerk's official staff when he arrived and they did not know what to expect. The article continues, "he drifted to one end of the room and started shaking hands with every single person present. ... Many a staffer who never had the opportunity to speak to a president was dumbfounded by the personal attention they received from the living legend." Yet this seems, from my limited experience elsewhere on the continent to be considered good form when joining a meeting** - although not expected of a high status person. But as the article implies, this was an example of Mandela's style of leadership.

One wonders if, in the brief conversations Mandela had with the staffers that day, there were any exchanges in the diverse languages of the country...

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* The following paper has a lot of this history: Beukes, Anne-Marie, "Language policy implementation in South Africa: How Kempton Park's great expectations are dashed in Tshwane," Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 38, 2008, pp. 1-26.
** It's a habit I personally got comfortable with after several years in West Africa. I remember in one gathering I joined shortly after returning to the US, realizing folks were dumbfounded as to why I, a living stranger, was shaking each person's hand.

Microsoft giving Africa LIP(s)

Where are we now with software localization in African languages? I'd like to try to take stock in several quick installments, beginning with desktop/laptop software and then moving to mobile devices. This post starts it off with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, due to no particular ordering - I just happened to come across something recently relating to Microsoft's (MS's) localization efforts.

MS's products are offered in diverse languages, but in what might be described as a tiered arrangement. A number of languages have fully localized versions - for MS Office 2013, for instance, there are by my count 40 such versions (which includes only Arabic among African languages, as well as the principal Eurphone languages used in Africa). But for other languages, MS's Local Language Program develops Language Interface Packs (LIPs) for Windows and Office. A LIP includes translations of about 80% of commands (the most frequently used), and is installed over another version, basically changing the language interface to the language of the LIP.

MS has added a number of African language LIPs for Windows and Office over the past decade. This represents a significant amount of work, notably on terminology (another key topic I hope to return to).

MS Windows 7, which was released in 2009, had 10 African language LIPs. Windows 8, released in 2012, introduced 3 more African LIPs (Kinyarwanda, Tigrinya, and Wolof), a Botswanan version for Setswana, and allowed installation of Hausa LIP on French in addition to English base language. The following list, derived from lists on the Windows site, summarizes African language LIP support under Windows 7 and 8 (in parentheses are the base languages on which the LIP can be installed, as well as indications for those languages added with 8 but not available for 7):

• Afrikaans (English base language editions)
• Amharic (English base language editions)
• Hausa (English base language editions; in Windows 8, French base language also)
• Igbo (English base language editions)
• Kinyarwanda (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (English base language editions)
• Setswana 
• Botswana (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• South Africa (English base language editions)
• Swahili (English base language editions)
• Tigrinya (Ethiopia) (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions)
• Wolof (in Windows 8 only; English base language editions & French base language)
• Xhosa (English base language editions)
• Yoruba (English base language editions)
• Zulu (English base language editions)

The number of MS Office LIPs for African languages has gone from three for Office 2003 to 13 for Office 2013 (that's out of a total of over 100 LIPs worldwide). The table below is adapted from information on their Office Language Interface Pack (LIP) downloads page (check marks indicate LIP available):

Language	Native name	MS Office 2003	MS Office 2007	MS Office 2010	MS Office 2013
Afrikaans	Afrikaanse	✔	✔	✔	✔
Amharic	አማርኛ	-	✔	✔	✔
Hausa	Hausa	-	✔	✔	✔
Igbo	Igbo	-	✔	✔	✔
Kinyarwanda	Kinyarwanda	-	-	-	✔
Sepedi / Northern Sotho	Sesotho sa Leboa	-	✔	✔	✔
Setswana (South Africa)	Setswana	-	✔	✔	✔
Swahili	KiSwahili	✔	✔	✔	✔
Tigrinya	ትግርኛ	-	-	-	✔
Wolof	Wolof	-	-	-	✔
Xhosa	isiXhosa	-	✔	✔	✔
Yoruba	ede Yorùbá	-	✔	✔	✔
Zulu	isiZulu	✔	✔	✔	✔

I have no information on any plans for other African languages.

MS additionally offers Multilingual User Interfaces which provide language interface options on a single device, though it is not clear whether any of these offer any African languages. (The term Language Packs, as distinguished from LIPs, has me [and apparently also Wikipedia?] a bit confused as it seems to be used in different ways.)

See also MS's Language Portal for additional information on their localization efforts. Also worth noting that evidently MS completed the LIPs much more quickly with recent releases than they had in the past.

I'd invite any comments - corrections or additional information. In getting back up to speed on this I again encountered MS's ever complex array of sites and pages about different programs, products, and versions, so it's probable I missed some relevant information... 

Closing the Xhosa Wikipedia?

A proposal to close the Xhosa Wikipedia has been made, and for some of us it raises some questions about how the Wikimedia Foundation deals with less-resourced languages, such as those in Africa. The bottom line here is really why there is little participation in African language editions of Wikipedia, and what the most appropriate course of action is - closing and eventually deleting, or finding ways to connect with communities that can work on them.

It is worth remembering that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, expressed its vision in this way: "The fundamental idea of Wikipedia is to create and give away a freely licensed encyclopaedia in every language of the world." What does/should this vision mean in terms of how African language content and communities are developed?

The Xhosa language (called isiXhosa in the language itself) is spoken by about 7-8 million people and is one of South Africa's official languages. In theory, it would seem like one of the African languages most likely to succeed on Wikipedia, so the questions the proposal for closure raise are quite pointed. Personally I think that there is a marketing issue here - but clearly the reasons for lack of connection need to be examined thoroughly. It's not just as simple as "there is no interest."

Meetings in recent weeks

Over the last few weeks I've had some interesting meetings in which topics related to African languages have been raised, but that I haven't gotten around to reporting here, including several at the University of Pennsylvania, the new National Museum of Language, the Center for Applied Linguistics, ACTFL (the dedication of their new office), and with Mrs. Ntombenhle Nkosi, CEO of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). Will travel tonight to Bamako for meetings with ACALAN and other organizations there.