IMLD 2020: "Languages without borders"

The theme of this year's International Mother Language Day (IMLD2020; 21 February 2020) - "Languages without borders" - seems especially appropriate for Africa. So many (almost all?) African languages - or more accurately, populations having a common mother tongue - are divided by borders established during the colonial period (and prudently maintained in the interests of peace). And people on opposite sides of these borders continue to use their languages, which former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konaré once referred to as "sutures" linking neighboring African countries.

The African Academy of Languages (ACALAN), has had structures in place for some years to work on African "cross-border vehicular languages," which are larger in numbers of speakers and geographic extend of use. In her message on the occasion of IMLD2020, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay calls attention to all cross-border languages - all mother tongues that cross borders:

For IMLD 2020, UNESCO has chosen the theme of languages without borders to draw attention to the way in which all languages, including mother tongues, contribute to intercultural dialogue and peace. Indeed, throughout the world, numerous cross-border languages bring their speakers closer to one another, turning borders into bridges instead of barriers.

40% of people not educated in mother languages

In  her IMLD2020 message, Mme Azoulay also calls out another fact that is particularly relevant to Africa:

Moreover, mother tongues are valuable allies in our efforts to achieve quality education for all. In fact, as UNESCO studies have shown, studying in a language which is not one’s own interferes with learning and increases inequalities. Yet according to the most recent estimates, 40% of the world’s citizens find themselves in this situation. Bilingual or multilingual education based on students’ mother tongue not only encourages learning, but also contributes to understanding and dialogue among peoples.

As with all IMLDs, we hold out the hope that this observance may inspire more progress in use and development of the diverse languages that are productive and charished parts of our common human heritage.

African Border Day & cross-border languages

Source: Ghana Immigration, 2016

Africa's often strange border lines don't seem like something to celebrate, but since 2011, the African Union (AU) has been marking June 7 as "African Border Day." Actually the original rationale was not so much celebration as a way to focus constructive attention on border areas which are sometimes the scene of conflict or illegal activity.

In reviewing a number of articles and documents on African Border Day, there does not seem to be any mention of cross-border languages, a specific focus of the AU's African Academy of Languages (ACALAN). Keep in mind that although no one suggests changing borders, the way European colonialists originally drew them divided many ethno-linguistic groups, meaning that a prominent feature of border areas is the existence of cross-border relations and commerce among peoples on both sides who speak the same African languages.

African Union Border Programme

Source: PeaceAU.org, 2015

The AU's press release on the first African Border Day framed it as "a way of further popularizing the AU Border Programme (AUBP) and mobilizing the requisite support for the efforts to promote peaceful and prosperous borders in Africa."

Created in 2007, the AUBP has as its mission "The prevention and resolution of border‐related disputes and the promotion of regional and continental integration, which constitute a tool in the structural prevention of conflicts in Africa." Its focus is important, but evidently limited to technical aspects of delimitation and the general goal of integration. There does not appear to be any consideration of linguistic, cultural, or communication in cross-border dynamics.

Convention on Cross-Border Cooperation, Niamey 2014

In Niamey, Niger, on 27 June 2014, just after the fourth African Border Day, the AU Convention on Cross-Border Cooperation was formally adopted. This elaborates various areas for African states to work together on in their common border areas. However, although "communication" and "cultural activities" are included (Article 3, Sections 2 & 3), there is no mention of languages (other than in the context of translation of the Convention itself into the AU's main languages).

This absence is all he more striking, given the efforts of ACALAN since 2009 with its Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commissions. Is there a reason not to mention a subject that seems so obvious, and which is a focus of another AU organization?

Languages & the future of border areas

Some 16 years ago, then Malian president Alpha O. Konaré imagined the borders of Africa as "sutures," not as lines of division, and highlighted the importance of cross-border languages in that joining. Perhaps that perspective is worth reflection on this seventh Africa Border Day.

Upcoming events: Bantu 6, Borderland Linguistics, LSSA/SAALA/SAALT, and TripleA 3

Having spotlighted ICTD 2016 last week and the upcoming TALAf 2016 workshop, here are three four more conferences taking place over the next few weeks whose subjects are directly or indirectly relevant to African languages.

Bantu 6

The 6th International Conference on Bantu Languages, 20-22 June 2016, "brings together specialists in all aspects of the study of Bantu languages." It is being organized by the University of Helsinki in Finland with several partners and sponsors. The provisional program and abstracts are available on the conference site.

The series of linguistic conferences of which this event is a part considers the branch of the Niger-Congo language family known as Bantu. Bantu languages are spoken in large parts of Southern and Central Africa, as well as in East Africa.

The series, which has involved many prominent international scholars in African languages and linguistics, goes back several years with conferences in various locations in Europe (this incomplete list gleaned from several sources):

• (First)
• Bantu Languages: Analysis, Description and Theory, 4-7 October 2007, University of Götenborg, Sweden
• Bantu 3, 25-27 March 2009, Tervuren, Belgium
• "B4ntu," 7-9 April 2011, Berlin, Germany (Bantu 4 was originally scheduled for 22-26 March 2010 at Lancaster University, UK, but had to be postponed)
• Bantu 5, 12-15 June 2013, INALCO, Paris, France

Borderland Linguistics Conference

The Borderland Linguistics Conference will be held on 27-28 June 2016 at the University of Bristol, UK. This is not specifically related to Africa, however, the program includes three presentations on languages in Africa. Also, given the attention in this blog to "cross-border languages" in Africa, it seems especially appropriate to mention this event.

The conference theme is described this way:

The notion of border is highly complex and problematic, whether it be an officially demarcated border between two states, or a less rigorously defined meeting space of somehow differentiated social or ethnic groups. Leading theorists have proposed that a broad-reaching 'theory' of borders may in fact be infelicitous, due to the contextual specificities of each different border area that may constitute an area of study. Nevertheless, borders remain fruitful sites for scholarly inquiry, and this conference invites contributions from linguistics researchers of all levels whose work focuses on borderlands.

LSSA / SAALA / SAALT 2016

The LSSA / SAALA / SAALT Joint Annual Conference for 2016 will be held at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, South Africa on 4-7 July 2016.  The three organizations running the conference are: Linguistics Society of Southern Africa; Southern African Applied Linguistics Association; and South African Association for Language Teaching.

The conference theme - "Language and Linguistics in the Global South: Posing the Challenge" - is framed "within the current context of demands for radical changes to academic content and access at our universities" and encouraged contributors to address "issues of decoloniality and southern theory in linguistic research and teaching." The topics of the conference include: applied linguistics; language practice; language teaching; linguistics; sign language; sociolinguistics; multilingualism; discourse analysis; and linguistic landscapes.

TripleA 3

The Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages (TripleA 3), 6-8 July 2016, Tübingen, Germany, is the third in a "workshop series aims at providing a forum for semanticists doing fieldwork on understudied languages. Its focus is on languages from Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania."

Semantics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the study of meaning. The TripleA 3 program includes a number of presentations on African languages.

Summary

The attentive reader will notice that three of thee four events or series take place in Europe. This is partly a function of chance in the time period chosen, although it is true that Northern institutions have the resources to sponsor such meetings.

Normally it is more useful to post the calls for participation/papers (CFPs), but these are published regularly on relevant sites including Linguist List. This blog is not intended as a reliable source for such news, but will hopefully continue to carry information about interesting meetings and events relating to African languages and the information society. (That said, an upcoming post will feature two CFPs that may be of interest.)

(The section on the Borderland Linguistics Conference was updated on 14 June 2016 with information provided by its organizer, Dr. James Hawkey. Information on the 2016 LSSA / SAALA / SAALT Joint Annual Conference was added on 17 June 2016.)

The Bamako 1966 meeting, 50 years later

From February 28 through March 5, 1966, a group of noted linguists and African language and literacy specialists from Africa and the North gathered in Bamako, Mali for a UNESCO-sponsored "expert meeting" on "unification of alphabets of national languages."^1,2

In a posting two years ago - "See you in Bamako in 2016?" - I discussed some reasons why it would be useful to revisit issues of harmonizing orthographies of African languages on the 50th anniversary of the meeting. Here I will focus mainly on the 1966 event itself. 

Background

This event was apparently the outcome of two processes, one being a proposal made to UNESCO's Executive Board by Amadou-Hampaté Bâ, Mali's representative to that body, to consider the issue of African language transcription, and the other a set of recommendations on the same topic by the 5th West African Language Conference held in Accra in April 1965.³ It also followed UNESCO-sponsored conferences on literacy held in Abidjan and in Ibadan, both in 1964.

The participants in the Bamako meeting included representatives from institutions in Cameroon, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Upper Volta (now of course Burkina Faso), as well as individual experts invited from other countries. Their names (from Annex I of the English and French versions of the report, which also have their affiliations and countries) are:⁴ David W. Arnott; Amadou-Hampaté Bâ; Oumar Ba; Étienne Balenghein; Mrs. Belovolova; Charles Bird; Geneviève Calame-Griaule; Mrs. J. Calvet; Ousmane Cissé; Bakary Coulibaly; M.A. Coulibaly; Alhaji Abba Jiddum Gana; Claude Gouffe; Ahmed M. Aq Harnany; Carl Hoffman; Maurice Houis; Anthony Kirk-Greene; Pierre F. Lacroix; Faconey Ly; Eldridge Mohamadou;Vincent Monteil; Demba N'Daw; Condotto Nenekhaly-Camara; Frederick W. Parsons; Karl G. Prasse; André Prost; Jean Rouch; Serge Sauvageot; Ibrahim Alpha Sow; Viktoria Petrovna Tokarskaja; Mahamane Touré; Kamory Traoré; Anton Vorbichler; Malam N.S. Wali; Daniel W. Zimmerman. The meeting was chaired by the Malian minister of education, Abdoulaye Singaré.

Work

The meeting in Bamako actually focused on six West African languages - Fula, Hausa, Kanuri, Manding, Songhay-Zarma, and Tamasheq - and on the Latin-based transcriptions for them. According to the report, the choice of languages was based on two criteria: (1) the language must be "officially recognized for adult literacy work in more than one Member State"; and (2) linguistic study of the language must be "sufficiently advanced to enable the work to proceed rapidly." There were a few subsequent expert meetings focusing on other groups of languages in the region, and most significantly, a meeting in Niamey in 1978 with more of a continent-wide mission of harmonizing African language transcriptions.

The Latin transcription of African languages actually has a long history, much of it traced back to missionary work in the late 19th century, but one of the dynamics has always been the tendency on one hand to develop special orthographies, even sometimes within the same language, for the phonetic systems encountered, and on the other hand to try to develop a unified system, even to the extent of covering many languages. This meeting is obviously in the latter category, building on earlier efforts, such as the IAI alphabet (1928, 1930).

One of the ways in which the Bamako meeting was significant was in facilitating discussion and agreement among several countries, including both Francophone and Anglophone states. In particular the orthographic conventions adopted in Nigeria for Hausa and Fula (including the so-called "hooked letters," in particular, ɓ, ɗ, and ƙ).

Some of the conventions discussed in the meeting, such as the hooked letters above for Hausa and Fula, and the letter ŋ ("eng") for for several languages have endured through the development of the African Reference Alphabet in Niamey. Several digraphs retained for Manding languages - dy, kh, nw, ty - and use of diacritics (accents) for open vowels were later dropped in favor of single letters and extended characters. (The "dy" has lived on, however, in the spelling of "Dyula.")

So the importance of the Bamako expert meeting was not necessarily in the specifics, but in advancing the process of developing standard orthographies for major African languages used in multiple countries.

The road not taken: Ajami and Tifinagh

Prior to European penetration and colonization of Africa, a number of languages of West Africa including most if not all the six discussed in Bamako, were written with an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet called Ajami. (The Arabic alphabet was also used on the East African coast and islands.)  There was apparently no interest on the part of colonial or post-independence authorities to develop these systems.

Among the reasons one might discern for such (non-)policy probably was the fact that resources were much more readily available for use of the Latin alphabet. One has only to look at Guinea's departure from the Bamako consensus to establish a Latin-based orthography using only the letters and diacritics one could type with typewriters of that epoch - no hooked letters or eng - to see an example of how central such practical limitations can be. (Guinea later harmonized its system with the rest of the region.)

Little surprise then that for Tamasheq, the ancient but locally used Tifinagh script was not entertained for literacy and other work.

Next steps?

In the years since the last major meeting focusing on harmonizing transcriptions - the expert meeting in Niamey mentioned above - we have of course seen revolutions in computing, how text in various scripts can be managed, and increasingly in human language technology. The standards fostered by meetings such as those in Bamako and Niamey have been helpful in the facilitating the informatisation of African languages.

However on country levels, orthographic rules for the same languages still vary. And now there are a number of new alphabets that, in the case of N'Ko for example, are popular among significant populations. And use of the older systems of Ajami and Tifinagh are facilitated with information technology.

So, in light of these complex realities and changing needs, the possibility of a new meeting that I brought up two years ago with regard to the 50th anniversary of the Bamako expert meeting still seems valid. Would a conference on African language transcriptions and technology be useful, as a way of taking stock and taking account of new developments? And would the 40th anniversary of the Niamey meeting in 2018 be a good time for it?

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1. The report of the meeting is available in original French (as image PDF and as HTML on the Bisharat site) and in English (image PDF).
2. Note in the title the use of "national language," a term that has been discussed previously on this blog. See in particular: "Ethnologue and 'national languages' in Africa" (5 Dec. 2013); "Ethnologue: 'National' and 'Principal' languages in Africa" (14 Oct. 2014); "'Community' & 'national' languages in African contexts" (11 Nov. 2015).
3. That same Congress in Accra, part of a series organized by the Survey of West African Languages, also founded the West African Linguistic Society. 
4. I thought it interesting to link the names where possible to bios or other webpages with information about these individuals. In some cases, however, this was not possible.

"Community" & "national" languages in African contexts

Working on preparing the PanAfrican Localisation (PanAfriL10n) wiki for relaunch, I recently returned to one particular reference - a 1985 UNESCO document and its use of two terms which have meanings in Africa that differ somewhat from mainstream (Western) definitions: "community language" and "national language."

The document in question is: UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Africa, 1985, African community languages and their use in literacy and education: A regional survey. A wikified version of its Appendix 1 presenting 159 African community languages is included in the wiki. The publication covers quite a bit more than that and despite its age it is well worth the attention of anyone interested in language planning in Africa.

Community language

It was the UNESCO document's definition of "community language" - for which there is also a page on the wiki - that had me opening it up again for the first time in years, and then looking up other definitions for comparison. First of all, the term as used by UNESCO evidently came out of a Subregional Seminar on National Languages and Teacher Training held in Dar es Salaam in 1979, itself also funded at least in part by UNESCO. Community language is defined as:

the dominant and general means of communication in a district or province or similar large area ... which serve[s] the purposes of general communication over fairly wide areas within countries....

In this sense, a community language is a widely spoken first language and may also serve as a local lingua franca - quite common in many African societies. Contrast that with the definition from Dictionary.com:

a language spoken by members of a minority group or community within a majority language context

This usage apparently emerged in the mid-1970s in Australia,¹ as an alternative way to describe languages other than English and Aboriginal languages, in the place of problematic terms such as immigrant language or minority language. It is also used now in Britain for non-English, non-Celtic languages,² and apparently is used in similar ways in other countries in the West.

No problem with either of these takes (although inevitably there are critiques of any term used to describe any population or its attributes), but it is important I think to note the different frames of reference involved, and value of understanding these in their own contexts.

As far as I am aware, "community language" has not been used much over the last 3 decades in discussing the sociolingistics of multilingual Africa (apart from a brief discussion in a recent book by Tove Skutnabb-Kangas³; I'd be grateful for any other examples). So it might be time to bring it back into discussion.

A subcategory of community languages in the survey is "shared community languages" - what are now more commonly called "cross-border languages" (a term used internationally⁴). Once you look at languages across borders, the type of use in each country becomes a factor in characterizing overall usage. The graphic at the right is an example of what that looks like in the case of Hausa.

National language

The UNESCO document also offers a very clear definition for "national language," a term with multiple uses and that always seems to have a hazy meaning. In general, "national language" tends to be used differently in Africa than in the West, to mean "language of the nation" (of which there may be more than one, but are not the Europhone official languages), rather than "nationwide language." I've discussed this previously in critiques of Ethnolgue's use of the term, in 2013 and 2014, but without reference to the definition from Dar es Salaam, 1979:

a national language is defined strictly as either (a) an African language that is also an official language, or (b) a language that has been decreed to be a national language of a country. It must be noted that according to this definition:
- all mother tongues are not necessarily national languages
- French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish are not national languages, even though they may be official languages

In many African countries, one or a number of African languages are given the legal status of "national language" and in a few, all languages spoken indigenously on their territory are included in this category. In short, "national language" in Africa most often can be plural. Contrast with this definition, also from Dictionary.com:

the language spoken and written by the majority of people in a country; also, the official language of a country, recognized and adopted by its government

There are two issues with the latter definition - first, it is incomplete, and second the conflation of "national" and "official." The latter confusion may be common ("official language" being another term with more than one definition and context of application), however in Africa there is most often an explicit distinction with regard to languages between statuses of "official" and "national" that the Dar es Salaam definition reflects.

African frame of reference for discussing languages

The differences in how these two terms are used in Africa on the one hand and in the West on the other merit a brief reflection. "Community" in one case seems to be more a matter of joining, where in the other, it is more a matter of setting or being set apart. "National" in one case is more plural, while in the other it is more exclusive. That is not to make a value judgement, but to the extent these impressions are valid, it is a difference with deeper origins and implications.

Also, where there is a difference, the definition used in Africa is less well-known. This issue was already familiar from discussions about meanings of "national language," so I found it of note that there seems to be a similar dynamic in the case of "community language."

Community & national languages as part of a system

Part of what is interesting about the effort begun in Dar es Salaam in 1979 and continued with the UNESCO study in 1985 was that defining terms like community language and national language was not just an exercise in categorizing languages and distinguishing among their use, but more an effort to conceptualize a system of language use in multilingual Africa. This system involved a "five-tier categorization of African languages in relation to development as follows:

• Mother tongue languages
• Community languages
• National language or languages (i.e., decreed as such)
• Languages of African intercommunication
• International languages"

This system, as I read it, is one of overlapping layers across which members of a multilingual society move, each with greater or lesser ease depending on education and linguistic portfolio. Outlining it in such a way calls attention to different levels of languages for purposes of planning and development.

At the same time, one could argue that what I have been calling the Western definitions of community and national languages also can be seen as part of a system. But that is a different system, wherein the national language is dominant, and each community language persists among a demographic minority in specific limited areas.

(See also: More on "community languages" in Africa)

The PanAfriL10n Wiki

Back on the topic of the PanAfriL10n wiki - I have taken longer than planned to get it to the point where it can be announced formally. The goal is presentability, and to that end some glitches in the transfer had to be corrected, and some features added. In terms of content, some pages needed to be eliminated or rewritten. Full updating will require input from others (another level of challenge), but some updates and additions are more important to the overall product, so they are being done now.

The longer term future of this wiki will depend on a number of factors, but if I'm investing time in it now, it is because there seems to be demand and there is not another resource that does what it attempts to do. More on all that when its return is formally announced.

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Notes:
1.  Michael Clyne. 1991. Community Languages: The Australian Experience. Cambridge University Press.
2. Colin Baker and Sylvia Prys Jones, eds. 1998. Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters. (p. 99)
3. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas. 2013. Linguistic Genocide in Education - or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? Routledge.
4. The French language Wikipedia has a lengthy article on this subject - Langue transfrontalière - but at time of access it had very little on Africa.

"Neighbor languages" in an African context

A recent edition of The Economist has an article on Scandinavian languages (especially Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian) entitled "Neighbour languages." Although the cultural context and the fact these languages are standardized and widely used in written form, make their situation different than what one would find in Africa, some of the discussion sounds like it could describe closely related languages like the several Manding languages in West Africa, for instance, or the Nguni languages of South Africa.

The term "neighbor language" is used in academic discussions of Scandinavian languages - note for example the description of the keynote by Prof. Arne Torp to the recent (July 2014) conference of the Association for Language Awareness - and apparently also in popular discourse about these languages in English (judging by a quick online search; I have no way of assessing usage in the languages themselves).

It is tempting to suggest wider use of this term in discussing the sociolinguistic situations and language policy and planning needs in Africa. The term "neighbor language" itself would be seem accessible to a wide range of people who are not specialized in linguistics or language issues - including development experts, who nevertheless may discuss "local language" issues where they work.

The problem however is another aspect of the sociolinguistic geography in West Africa that is very different than that of Scandinavia. The term "neighbor language" in Scandinavia, as Prof. Torp points out, is a reference to linguistic similarity rather than geographic proximity. But the latter makes the term's use more or less unambiguous in that region (despite some linguistic diversity there). In much of Africa, however, a group of linguistic "neighbor languages" may be geographically interspersed with other unrelated languages, such that one's geographic neighbors may speak as their first language, something not mutually intelligible. Speaking of a "neighbor language" in that context could be interpreted linguistically or geographically.

All of this has me wondering if some term analogous to"neighbor languages" might be helpful in framing discussions and planning relating to languages in Africa. We already have "cross-border languages" to describe the common situation where first languages or regional lingua francas are spoken in two or more countries, and this concept was used by the African Academy of Languages in constituting several "Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commissions" to consider issues like harmonization of orthographies across borders.

But there does not seem to be an easy term to use when discussing "linguistic neighbor languages" in Africa.

This is important in Africa because for instance efforts to develop educational materials in a language that has close "linguistic neighbors" may be undertaken in isolation from (if not ignorance of the existence of) those neighbors. This has hidden costs in missed opportunities for sharing and adapting information among related languages. A way to easily refer to and call attention to those "neighbors" might facilitate awareness and productive discussions in this regard.

In any event, "neighbor languages" is a phenomenon not unique to Scandinavia and Africa, of course, and there are useful lessons to share across regions in how to accommodate and take advantage of similarity of closely related languages.

The "eng" times for unified capital ŋ?

Perhaps the most widely used "extended Latin" character, the letter ŋ (pronounced "eng" or "engma"), has two different upper case forms that are not used interchangeably, but used alternately by different groups of languages. One of these resembles an N but with a descending hook on the right leg ("N-form"), and the other resembling a larger version of the ŋ ("n-form"). The latter, in turn, has stylistic variations in which the right leg either descends below the line, or stays above it.

Forms of letter "eng"*

The current status and future of these dual forms of capital, and how best to handle them technically for displays were the subject of a brief discussion last month (Nov. 2013) in the wake of proposed change in Dejavu fonts that was first brought up on the developers list for the latter:

• Dejavu-fonts list under title New glyph for U+014A
• Also on "The Eng" list, a specialized forum managed by Michael Everson

In fact, this is a potential issue that has long been known, since different regions tend to use different forms, and different fonts have one or the other form. Consequently,there are many situations where doesn't know what form the capital will take. A larger issue is whether there needs to be a new Unicode character for one of the uppercase forms - what would be called "disunification" of the existing capital letter.

Background

In linguistic terms, the letter ŋ stands for a "velar n," which is pronounced as "ng" in the English word, "king." If it were used in standard English spelling, you might come across something like "siŋiŋ a soŋ." It is used in the orthographies of a range of languages from Saami in northern Europe to a number of African languages (mainly in the west and central regions, but also Dinka in South Sudan and Karamojong in Uganda), to some Aboriginal languages in Australia. (It also figures in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which of course does not need an upper case).

In many languages, the eng is distinguished from "ng" which is a prenasalized "g," pronounced "n-g," and in any event is especially useful in the beginning of words.** In the Fula language, for instance, the difference between "ng" and "ŋ" at the beginning of a number of words is meaningful. The root ŋor- at least in Maasinankoore has to do with a riverbank, while ngor- is derived from the root for male, wor-. A hippopotamus might be referred to as ngabbu, but the root ŋabb- has to do with climbing something or mounting a horse. Ngari is came or arrived; ŋari is beauty. There are other such examples.

Personally it was in Togo that I first encountered use of the letter ŋ, in the Ewe name for Peace Corps and when learning some of the Ewe and Kabiye languages. Then later in Mali when learning Fula and Bambara. The capital letter was always in the "n-form" in those places and in all I ever saw in African languages.

Later I found that a reason for that consistency of usage probably had to do with efforts to standardize letter forms, notably with the African Reference Alphabet proposed 35 years ago in Niamey by the Meeting of Experts on the Transcription and Harmonization of African Languages. (The glyph used in the pre-Unicode African special character standard ISO 6438 [1983] varies for some reason, with an earlier version having the n-form, and later versions from the 1990s showing the N-form.)

Rotated G

One aspect of the graphical history of the letter ŋ is worth noting before moving on: Apparently early printers would sometimes rotate a capital G to produce this character. So in effect the so-called "n-form" capital ŋ actually also looks like it could be called "turned-G form" capital ŋ. (I've produced the one at the right for comparison purposes only.***)

What's the problem then?

The problem with the two main forms (or "glyphs") of the capital ŋ - "n-form" and "N-form" - boils down to not being sure which form you are going to get since different fonts have one or the other form, and with the alternative forms being preferred or required in different places for different languages. This is because the two main forms are treated as the same character in Unicode, with the same "code point" (which a computer software uses to call up the appropriate symbol from the selected or default font).

These are not new issues, but now that they are getting more attention (which may actually be a good sign to the extent that more is going into print in the languages concerned).

From where we are now, there appear to be two options:

1. Continue as is, but develop means for locales or language preferences to select the appropriate form ("glyph") of upper case ŋ from fonts that have the desired glyph. However the technical feasibility is apparently an issue. 
2. "Disunify" the capital ŋ into two characters, with one of the major forms being given a new Unicode code point. This would be disruptive, but extremely so if it also required a new code point for a paired lowercase ŋ (with the exact same appearance as the one used throughout this posting) - all kinds of existing digital texts, fonts, and software would have to adjust for the change in some significant set of languages.

Unicode in principle calls for a separate code point for each character so one question is, that with two very different forms/glyphs being historically used and preferred (with varying degrees of intensity) in in different regions, how was the decision made to treat these as variants?

I'm actually looking over some past discussions to see how the issue and alternative approaches were treated. A 20+ message exchange on A12n-collaboration on 4-6 April 2002 among Peter Constable, John Hudson, Andrew Cunningham, and me dealt mainly with forms used in Africa and to a lesser degree Australia, with mention of Saami. (I am reconstituting the 2002-2004 archive of this list to post on A12n-archive.) However that treated all forms as variants.

Ultimately however the main question is the best way forward for all concerned. It is worth noting that Sjur Moshagen's otherwise well-framed proposal to disunify (at the end of the recent email discussions cited above) would put all the burden of change on Africa and anyone working with the numerous African languages which have the ŋ in their orthographies. Disunification the other way would similarly cost those using Saami and Australian Aboriginal languages - so it's a difficult set of choices.

A Niger exception?

A quick note about Denis Jacquereye's statement in the recent email discussions that in Niger, the N-form capital ŋ is more common - this despite the n-form being established in Niger's orthographies and in the "harmonized" orthographies used across the region. It would be of interest to see any examples, but one wonders if a limited choice of fonts might have been a major factor. A larger issue in terms of planning would be the cost of introducing or establishing such a variation ("dis-harmonization"?) in a wider regional usage, and how that might impact font development, software localization (Fula is a regional cross-border language; Zarma is part of the cross-border Sonrai cluster, for which localization is being done), etc. This would be even more problematic if Unicode were to decide to "disunify" the character.

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* Source of illustration: Wikimedia Commons
** In the orthographies of many East African languages, such as that for standard Swahili, an apostrophe after ng is used to indicate this difference: ng' = ŋ.
*** "Turned-g" is actually a character used to transliterate text in the Georgian language script.

Ethnologue and the cross-border languages of Africa

Two content features seem to me to detract from the overall quality of Ethnologue - which is the indispensable reference on all the world's languages. One is that pages on cross-border languages - a prominent sociolinguistic feature in Africa - are titled as the language of only one of the countries where they are spoken. The other is that in the current online version, the country pages list "national language," which is a problematic heading, given diverse use of the term, notably in a number of African countries. In this post I will deal with the first of these two items.

A continent traversed by cross-border languages

Due to the way borders in Africa were drawn, a great many of its ethno-linguistic groups are split among two or more of the modern African countries. The languages spoken by such groups can today be called "cross-border languages," and in fact this is the term used by the African Academy of Languages for some of the work it is doing, notably the Vehicular Cross-Border Language Commissions.

Languages that are spoken in more than one country - whether as a first language, which is often the case, or as a vehicular language, which is also frequent - have been a concern of language planning in Africa since independence. The various conferences on African languages that I have cited in some previous posts reflect this concern. Cross border languages were also highlighted by former Malian president Alpha Oumar Konaré, who compared them to "sutures" uniting African countries.*

"A language of" one country, more than one country, or a region?

When one looks up one of these cross-border languages in Ethnologue, however, they are as a rule listed as "a language of" a single country. It bears noting that when borders divide a language community, that community is rarely split in equal parts, so it appears that Ethnologue usually assigns the language to the country where there are more speakers. Other countries, regardless of significance in the language usage, are placed under "Also Spoken In:..."

So, for instance Hausa, the first language of 18.5 million Nigerians (according to Ethnologue, based on a 1991 SIL estimate), but also of about half the much smaller population of Niger, and used across large parts of West Africa (as a lingua franca), is titled simply "... a language of Nigeria." Is Hausa any less a language of Niger, given that the historic home of most Hausas (sometimes called Hausaland) extends well into the latter country? Better "A language of Nigeria and Niger"? Or given the number of other countries where it is "also spoken," maybe Hausa is really "A language of West Africa"?

Another example is the Ewe language, spoken by a population split between southeastern Ghana and southern Togo, which is listed as "... a language of Ghana." Similar to the case with Hausa in Nigeria and Niger, Ewe is spoken by more people in Ghana, but by a larger percentage of the population in Togo. So why not "A language of Ghana and Togo"? The reverse is noted in the case of Southern Sotho, which has more speakers in South Africa, but a higher percentage of population speaking it in Lesotho (it has legal status in both countries) - and is listed as "A language of Lesotho."

Examples abound, among which the major regional language of Swahili is listed as a language of Tanzania (see also discussion of macrolanguages, below).

Ultimately it seems (1) misleading to title pages on cross-border languages as languages of one particular country, and (2) inconsistent the way it is done. Going back to Ethnologue's "Plan of the Site" page, one finds mention of counting "each language only once as belonging to its country of origin" - but what if the area of origin of a language (to the extent one can determine that with any precision) is divided by borders?

Would it not be possible to develop a simple set of criteria by which cross-border languages were given titles  based on the extent (countries) of their major use?

Cross-border macrolanguages

The category of macrolanguage - defined as "multiple, closely related individual languages that are deemed in some usage contexts to be a single language" - takes this issue up another level. Although defined on linguistic criteria, macrolanguages in Africa are even more likely to cross borders, often many borders. There are 14 African macrolanguages by my count, with many of those being cross-border and some really looking like regional languages. Yet all of those are listed as being of one country or another:

• Arabic, "A macrolanguage of Saudi Arabia" (spoken in many countries, including at least 9 in Northern Africa)
• Dinka, "A macrolanguage of South Sudan" (spoken mainly in South Sudan)
• Fulah, "A macrolanguage of Senegal" (spoken in well over a dozen countries, mainly in West Africa)
• Gbaya, "A macrolanguage of Central African Republic" (spoken in CAR and Cameroon)
• Grebo, "A macrolanguage of Liberia" (spoken in Liberia and Ivory Coast)
• Kalenjin, "A macrolanguage of Kenya" (spoken mainly in Kenya, and also in Uganda and Tanzania)
• Kanuri, "A macrolanguage of Nigeria" (spoken in 5 countries of West and Central Africa)
• Kongo, "A macrolanguage of Democratic Republic of Congo" (spoken in DRC, Angola, and Congo)
• Kpelle, "A macrolanguage of Liberia" (spoken in Liberia and Guinea)
• Malagasy, "A macrolanguage of Madagascar" (spoken mainly in Madagascar)
• Mandingo, "A macrolanguage of Guinea" (spoken in 7 countries of West Africa)
• Oromo, "A macrolanguage of Ethiopia" (spoken in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia)
• Swahili, "A macrolanguage of Tanzania" (spoken in at least 9 countries mainly in East Africa, among which some governments have accorded it legal status)
• (Akan is described as "A language of Ghana" in Ethnologue, and is also a macrolanguage in ISO 639-3. Either way it is considered to include Fanti and Twi, and is spoken mainly in Ghana.)

Here again, would it not be possible to adjust certain titles to more accurately convey the range of use? For instance, Fulah as "A macrolanguage of West Africa" and Swahili as "A macrolanguage of East Africa." The macrolanguage items may be easier to modify on a case-by-case basis, as there are fewer of them than languages, and their respective circumstances are somewhat unique. The language entries on the other hand might, as suggested above, need a set of criteria to avoid case by case discussion.

Final thoughts

These observations and suggestions are made in the spirit of helping improve the Ethnologue resource, with a mind particularly to what kind of information that people new to the study of languages of Africa would take away from their initial encounter with it. Cross-border languages exist in all world regions, of course, but perhaps in none more than Africa, where borders were never intended to respect the integrity of ethno-linguistic groups. This category of languages seems to me to merit attention and appropriate revision in how it is presentated.

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* "Les langues nationales transfrontalières doivent être non pas des points limitrophes, des points de démarcation, mais des points de suture entre nos pays."

What did the International Year of Languages mean for Africa?

With the formal conclusion of the International Year of Languages (IYL) on International Mother Language Day, I'd like to take a moment to ask: What did the IYL mean for Africa?

With any such observances, any analysis right afterward will of course not be able to take account of long-term or latent effects (e.g., people or organizations whose awareness was raised and whose later action is somehow affected). Nevertheless it's worth at least looking at what has been done.

A glance at the calendar of events in and outside of Africa shows a diversity of observance (this list is far from comprehensive, so pointers to other events and more information are invited):

• 5-7 March - Southern Africa Regional Conference on "National Policies: The role of cross-border languages and the place of lesser used languages" (sponsored by ACALAN and held in Johannesburg, South-Africa). See Minister Z. P. Jordan's keynote address c
• 22-24 April - East Africa Regional Conference on "National Policies: The role of cross-border languages and the place of lesser used languages" (sponsored by ACALAN and held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.) No link found.
• 28 May - Conférence-débat « Les langues africaines, facteur d'intégration » (tenu à l'UNESCO, Paris dans le cadre de la Journée (semaine) de l'Afrique, qui avait comme thème « Langues africaines et l’enfant africain »)
• 18 October - Launch of the International Year of Languages in Botswana (per article in Mmegi)
• 23 October - Golden jubilee of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. This famous Nigerian author now intends to translate this work into his first language, Igbo.
• 28 Oct. - 4 Nov. - "Somalia: The Word and the Way to a Better World" (Somali Literature Festival with a "Somali Language and Literature Day" and touring book display, in London). Alternate link.

In addition there has been mention of the IYL in various press articles in different countries. A few have been linked on the AfricanLanguages list (try searching "International Year"). Special mention should be made of a blog posting and video entitled "Orphan's Lullaby" by South African author Alex Smith to mark the close of the IYL (note the various translations in text).

The IYL also marked the beginning of the African Network for Localisation (ANLoc), a 3-year project which succeeded the PanAfrican Localisation project. These are part of a program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada to support development of ICT in African languages.

African locales

Speaking of ANLoc, one of its subprojects that is working on compiling locales for African languages. A press release timed just before IMLD and the end of IYL appeals for help in this effort:

Thu, 19/02/2009 - 11:00
PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Pan-African researchers unlock computers for African languages on Mother Language Day

In celebration of International Mother Language Day, a Pan African Network of computer and language experts is ensuring that computers are unlocked for mother tongue speakers.

ANLoc, The African Network for Localisation (pronounced Unlock), is a Pan-African network undertaking a number of projects to help eliminate technological barriers that prevent computers from being used by mother tongue speakers.

International Mother Language Day is hosted on 21 February each year by UNESCO and aims at raising awareness of mother tongue usage.

To celebrate International Mother Tongue Day the ANLoc locales sub-project is undertaking a special community driven push to enable African language technology. The locales sub-project is focused on creating 100 new African locales. A locale is a set of data that guides a computer to adapt to the local language and country. Locales contain information that instructs a computer on how to write essential basic information, such as the days of the week and month names in a given language, and how to write the monetary values for a given country. Once locale data is in place, Africans often enjoy a first class computer experience for the very first time. Locales impact how well a computer's spell checker works, finding and indexing of African language documents and searching using tools like Google.

The ANLoc Network is encouraging African language speakers in African and the diaspora to celebrate International Mother Language Day by helping to develop a locale for their language. Those wanting to contribute can visit http://o2.it46.se/afrigen to find out more about the importance and need for locales and how to contribute one for their language.

Information about the ANLoc Network and the various projects being undertaken to eliminate technological barriers for African language in the digital age can be found here at http://africanLocalisation.net.