Conferences: ACAL 2017 & two BAAL events

Here is some information on three upcoming conferences that deal in one way or another with African language topics. The first, the 48th Annual Conference of African Linguistics (ACAL), will be held at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, Indiana, US on March 30 - April 2, 2017 (CFP already passed). The other two are organized by groups connected with the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL): The BAAL - Cambridge University Press Seminar Series (BAAL-CUP), will be held at Aston University in Birmingham, UK on 27-28 April 2017 (CFP deadline Feb. 20); and the BAAL - Language in Africa Special Interest Group (BAAL-LIASIG) Annual Conference, will be held at the University of Reading in Reading, UK on May 12, 2017 (CFP deadline March 31).

ACAL 48

The ACAL, run since 2013 by an organization with the same acronym, the Association of Contemporary African Linguistics, is a major annual academic meeting on African languages and linguistics. I personally had the chance to present at ACAL 35 in 2004, and to attend ACAL 38 ten years ago.

This year's conference is hosted by the Department of Linguistics at Indiana University. "The conference will focus on all aspects of African linguistics, from linguistic description to theoretical analysis and sociolinguistics."

Links to registration and the program page (though the latter was blank at the time of this writing).

BAAL-CUP

The BAAL-CUP seminar has as its theme "Minority Languages in New Media: Towards language revitalisation in Europe and Africa." The term "minority language" is a little tricky, but in the African context, I read it as applying to most if not all African languages.

Per the seminar information, it "is intended to identify and discuss emerging trends in the study of minority languages in new media and technology. This includes the ways in which minority languages are supported through their presence in new media, and how minority language users are making use of their languages in digital landscapes traditionally dominated by global languages such as English."

"New Media  refers to digital communication platforms such as online news  sites, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and other Social Media."

Links to the CFP and registration.

BAAL-LIASIG 2017

The LIA SIG conference this year has the theme "Language without Borders: Multilingual Communication in Africa and the Diaspora."

Per the CFP, topics addressing the theme may include for example: oral communication; multilingualism; language choice; codeswitching; translanguaging in education; and translation.

Links to the CFP and registration.

Balancing Act Africa media survey and languages

Yesterday evening I had the opportunity to meet and talk with a longtime virtual acquaintance, Russell Southwood of Balancing Act Africa. Russell and I have been in email contact since 2000 or so, when Balancing Act was establishing itself as an authoritative site on internet, media, and communications in Africa, and when I was developing the concept for Bisharat. And in 2001, the Balancing Act newsletter No. 69 featured an early article I wrote on support for African languages in text.

Russell and Balancing Act recently published the results of a 2013 "detailed market research study in seven Sub-Saharan countries [Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania] in the vanguard of adopting the Internet and social media," available via Balancing Act's issue No. 724 (19 September 2014). The report mentions languages in several parts, which I'll briefly touch on below. A key takeaway from the report is:

There is not a great deal of research on what language is used in relation to media in Sub-Saharan Africa: what does exist are largely academic studies from within the field of linguistics. (p. 6)

Overall, the report discusses trends in Africa that:

• affect media and communication delivery
• (5 areas) rise of social media; growth of feature & smartphone ownership; liberalization of media; mass media vs. niche audiences; and news
• affect media and communication use
• (4 "recurring patterns") urban vs. rural; education levels; income; and language
• (5 country profiles) Ghana; Kenya; Nigeria; Senegal; and Tanzania
• will affect communication and media over the next 5 years
• (3 "known futures") more media & fragmentation; more devices; continuing growth of internet & social media
• (6 "speculative futures") closing the rural media deficit; mobile media; edutainment; learning channels; public interest media; and online platforms with reliable info.

The subject of language(s) is touched on in several places. In discussion of "fragmentation" of radio and TV audiences, language specialization is mentioned as one possible characteristic of "niche" channels (another one is topical specialization).

In the context of what the report terms "the rural media deficit" (by comparison with urban areas), I read language as an implied factor. Likewise for education levels.

The importance of Africa languages is discussed at some length as one of four "recurring patterns" in a section entitled "Beyond Official Languages – Reaching People in Vernacular Languages." Here there are anecdotes concerning audience preference for or greater facility in use of what I'd call first languages and local lingua francas. It also mentions the role of media liberalization in facilitating formation of language specialized stations.

In discussing "known" future trends, an increase in African language broadcasting is foreseen. The possibility of social media platforms in major African languages is indicated as a possibility as social media use increases.

In general it is good to see the attention given to the linguistic dimension of media and communications in Africa. hopefully this will spur more interest in and research on the topic. A few quick comments bear mentioning:

• The report cites the possible figure of 3000 languages in Africa. Indeed there are counts that go that high. However many groups of separately counted "languages" in such large figures may have high mutual intelligibility, and alternatively be considered by to be dialects or varieties of the same language. This is important for media in that often one language variety can be understood by speakers of close varieties in the broadcast radius. For example, when I worked in Djenné, Mali in the mid 1980s, I had Songhai-speaking co-workers originally from the Gourma-Rharous area of Mali who listened to the Zarma language broadcasts from neighboring Niger.
• Further discussion of fragmentation of the media market and language-oriented niche stations would benefit from three perspectives:
• the previous point about mutually intelligible languages;
• the existence of so many cross-border languages in Africa (the previous point illustrates that too), which would add another dynamic to language specific broadcasts; and
• the fact that many stations historically have divided their broadcast day among emissions in different languages of the audience (I've noted this on national level, official and commercial stations, as well as in community radio stations) - how might this approach blunt the "fragmentation" while serving different segments of clearly multilingual audiences?
• The report uses the term "vernacular" in discussion of African languages. On one level this is technically correct, but on another, it is problematic, implying a lesser status form of speech. Personally I avoid it, especially after hearing a prominent African expert in African language policy criticizing another African for using the term (in French) to refer to African languages.
• One gap for attention in future research is localization of content and software/apps in African languages. This relates to the mention in the report under social media futures of localized interfaces, as well as to wider use and usability of internet content for various purposes like education and extension as we move forward.

On ebola, in Yoruba

In a previous post, I included a link to a YouTube video on ebola in the Yoruba language. For reference, other videos on the subject in Yoruba and other Nigerian languages are accessible via @LensOnEbola on Twitter.  In this post, however, I'd like to highlight some information in written Standard Yoruba, since that can be read, revised, remixed, and reused in various ways.

First, a quick intro to written Yoruba. The Latin-based script currently used for Yoruba in Nigeria - most of the Yorubaphone population lives in the southwestern part of that country - was developed beginning in the early 19th century (Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a remarkable figure in Nigerian history, was associated with that process). This orthography normally uses some characters with either small vertical lines or dots under (the latter sometimes referred to in English as "subdots") to represent the "open e" and "open o" vowel sounds and the "sh" sound (ẹ, ọ, ṣ). Since it is a tonal language, tone marks help disambiguate meaning, though are sometimes omitted. The Yoruba alphabet is considered a "complex Latin" script (Vietnamese is also in this category).

Yoruba varieties in Benin are written with characters from the African reference alphabet. (Latin-based orthographies for African languages are generally fixed on the national level, and in many other cases have common characters and rules across borders).

The following is a sampling of information mentioning ebola, in written Yoruba, sourced via quick online searches (NB- I do not speak the language so am trusting that the material so accessed is relevant and appropriate):

• The poster at right, from the Nigerian government Ebola Virus Information Unit website
• The Alákọ̀wé blog has a post entitled simply "Ebola" (18 Aug. 2014; this blog is a nice presentation of Yoruba text, although the chosen font fails on some "subdot" letters; also audio). 
• Various posts on Olayemi Oniroyin's blog (with some English)
• The Yoruba Clinic Blog has a post entitled "Arun ebola farahan ni Kaduna ni igba akoko!" (2 Sep. 2014)
• Articles (PDF format) on the Alaroye Youruba-language news site, for example:
• "Arun Ebola: E gbe igbese kia, e yee seleri asan faw on araalu — PDP"
• "Ara eni ti arun Ebola ba da dubule nikan leeyan ti le ko o — Dokita Jide Idris"
• The Yoruba edition of Wikipedia (one of the largest editions in African languages) has a translated article about ebola entitled "Àrùn kòkòrò àìlèfojúrí afàìsàn Ebola." This is likely a result of the WikiProjectMed efforts.
• A graphic, apparently from the Lagos State Ministry of Health with text that may be Yoruba.

This is just a sampling for one specific major language of West Africa. Any more complete and useful list of material on ebola in Yoruba would require a more systematic effort, as well as of course people literate in the language  Such collection of material in languages of the region could be used to develop information banks on ebola (and eventually other health issues) in those languages, which could be tapped for a range of public information, health worker training, and general education uses.

Perspectives sur la situation au Niger

Voici un mot d'un ami et ancien collegue qui est basé à Maradi:

En réalité, la crise alimentaire est localisée dans quelques zones pastorales et agropastorales du Nord Maradi, Tillabéry, Zinder et de quelques département de la région de Tahoua. Elle a surtout été causée par la rareté des dernières pluies de l'année passée et, par des dégâts importants des criquets sur la culture et le pâturage, entraînant ainsi la hausse des prix des céréales et les crises chroniques de malnutrition des enfants. Dans ces zones de taux élevé de sous-alimentation, évidement le niveau de mortalité infantile est très élevé. Voilà en un mot la situation. Mais elle n'est pas générale dans tout le pays. Ce sont les médias qui font d'une situation localisée, en situation nationale.

The New York Times has an article that, without clarifying this aspect, does attempt to look at different dimensions of the crisis, including chronic risk of famine, Niger's Anguish Is Reflected in Its Dying Children.

Among other things, the topic of poor agricultural technniques / tools / use of inputs was mentioned. This is true, but the solutions tried before haven't had much impact. One of the main avenues to improving agriculture is not more research or money, as important as these are, but more education of farmers. In fact there are a lot of issues intertwined in perpetuating rural poverty, and in the Sahel where rain is uncertain, turning that into annual risk of food shortfall or worse. But if there is to be a hope for any fundamental and long-term changes, it will require a concerted effort for education. And that should necessarily be done to the maximum extent possible in the farmers' first languages - which does not mean to exclude French or English, but if you are going to talk with farmers about farming etc., and expect them to discuss among themselves, best to use their languages from the start.

In the case of Niger, the language issue is one that is actually in its favor. Hausa, spoken by about half the population (not to mention millions south of the border in Nigeria), is a major language with a literary tradition. It would be easy to discuss all aspects of agriculture (and related aspects of rural economy) on any level of complexity in this tongue. Zarma, spoken by a quarter of the population and closely related to Sonrai spoken in eastern Mali, cannot lack adequate vocabulary either. Similarly, Fulfulde and Tamajak in Niger are dialects of major regional languages spoken by pastoralists, who have been surviving in this environment for ages. Why not put some resources into working in these languages for education and rural renaissance?