II.

Language Groupings

According to the most recent and widely accepted scholarly practice, the languages of Africa are grouped into four language families: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Niger-Congo. A language family is a group of related languages presumably derived from a common origin; a family is often subdivided into branches composed of more closely related languages. At least some of the African linguistic families are believed to have a history of more than 5,000 years. African languages that belong to different families are as little alike as English, Turkish, Chinese, and Navajo, although the disparate tongues may be spoken in the same locality. Even within a single family, African languages may be as different in sound and structure as English, Italian, Russian, and Hindi, all of which are members of the Indo-European language family. Within a given branch of one family, however, languages may often be as closely related as German, Dutch, and Swedish.

Not all the African languages have writing systems, and in certain tongues the only written literature is a translation of some portion of the New Testament. Except for Arabic and certain languages of Ethiopia, the alphabets of most African languages are based on adaptations of the Roman alphabet and were introduced by missionaries. A few tribes, notably the Vai in Liberia and the Bamum in Cameroon, have developed their own syllabic writing systems.

The first European students of African languages were usually missionaries who, more than other groups, were interested in learning to speak with native populations and preparing literature for them. Much of the available information on African languages still comes from missionary sources. A major early work on African languages is the Polyglotta Africana, by the 19th-century missionary-teacher Sigismund W. Koelle; it contains a list of some 300 words and phrases in 156 different African languages. Koelle's information came from freed slaves living in the British West African protectorate of Sierra Leone. Twentieth-century scholars, such as the German linguists Carl Meinhof and Diedrich Westermann, the South African linguist Clement Martyn Doke, and such British linguists as Ida Caroline Ward and Malcolm Guthrie, have made substantial contributions to the knowledge of African languages and the relationships of these languages to one another. The American linguist and anthropologist Joseph H. Greenberg significantly revised earlier notions of the groupings of African languages, although some modifications and refinements of his 1963 classification can be expected from the increasing number of scholars in the field.

It has been suggested that the indigenous languages of Africa will eventually give way to internationally important European languages, or at least to a few of the major languages native to Africa. However, despite the huge increase in contacts between Africa and the West during the 20th century, especially during the latter half of the century, most African languages show no signs of dying out. This is because, except in the remotest areas, Africans have traditionally spoken not only their birth tongue but also a local or regional lingua franca, such as Hausa, Swahili, or Arabic, associated with trade. During the 20th century, as access to education, and radio and television increased, European languages also became understood and spoken by an increasing number of Africans. The most widely spoken are English, French, and Portuguese, the languages of the main former colonial powers; in some African countries they have been formally encouraged as a lingua franca, or have become incorporated into pidgin or creole languages developed as local lingua francas, such as Fanagolo in the southern African mines. The post-colonial period has also been characterized by a resurgence of interest and pride in the indigenous languages of Africa in many parts of the continent.