Dear Donald, I'm the one you posted about a few months ago (found the posting by Googling myself :) - I got a grant from the Documenting Endangered Languages program from NSF/NEH to document and describe Badiaranke, which is spoken in Guinea, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau.
I had to respond to this message because it strikes me as ridiculously ignorant to the point of being irresponsible - this is not your fault, of course, but the fault of whoever wrote the article. In particular, the claim that " Concerns that African languages could become extinct are almost over" because "The internet is becoming a refuge for the continent's languages that would otherwise become extinct" is quite an amazing statement, if the languages we are talking about here are "Kiswahili .... Uganda's Luganda, Kenya's Kikuyu, Burundi's Kirundi, Rwanda's Kinyarwanda, Somalia's Somali, and Nigeria's Hausa." Languages like Kiswahili, Somali, and Hausa are really not the languages that anyone is worried will go extinct. Quite the contrary, languages like Kiswahili and Hausa are the very languages that are threatening other smaller, indigenous languages in countries like Kenya and NIgeria. Africa is not like other parts of the world like Australia and the US, where indigenous languages have been wiped out by the prestige and policies favoring the colonial language - though of course this is to some extent a threat in Africa as well, its strength depending on where one is in Africa. The greater threat to small languages in many parts of Africa is the dominance of other local languages - e.g. Hausa, Swahili, Fula... in the case of Badiaranke, for instance, French is practically irrelevant in whether Badiaranke survives, but the relative economic, political, and social dominance of Fulacounda/Pularfuta and Mandinka speakers in the area is what threatens the language most. I thought your other readers of these postings might be interested in this clarification. I will also look up the article itself and see if I can figure out how to contact the author, because - as you can see - I feel very strongly about this issue. While I'm at it, thanks for a wonderful job moderating this listserv, and thanks for sending along so many interesting stories. Sincerely, Rebecca Cover --- "Donald Z. Osborn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > FYI, the following article from Highway Africa News > Agency is available on > AllAfrica.com at > http://allafrica.com/stories/200511180584.html (I > was alerted > to the article by its posting on the ILAT list)... > DZO > > > Internet: A New Space for African Languages > > Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown) > http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/hana/ > November 18, 2005 > By Ansbert Ngurumo > Geneva > > Concerns that African languages could become extinct > are almost over. The > internet is becoming a refuge for the continent's > languages that would > otherwise become extinct. > > Despite the powerful influence of English, French > and Portuguese as official > languages in certain African countries, indigenous > African languages are > proving that technology belongs to no language. > > Kiswahili, a language spoken by about 80 million > people in Eastern and Central > Africa and recently adopted as one of African > Union's official languages, is > extensively used on internet websites by newspapers > and bloggers. > > Linguists interested in African languages are > increasingly turning their > interests to translate and teach Kiswahili on the > internet. > > The Kamusi Project by Yale University > http://www.yale.edu.swahili is a recent > initiative aimed at translating Kiswahili into > English. > > Tanzania is probably Africa's central place for > development of Kiswahili. 99 > percent of the country's 35 million people speak > Kiswahili. > > Sections of daily newspapers, portals, national > websites and other relevant > information is now accessible on Internet, making > the internet a new space for > African languages. > > Other languages enjoying similar advancements > include Uganda's Luganda, Kenya's > Kikuyu, Burundi's Kirundi, Rwanda's Kinyarwanda, > Somalia's Somali, and > Nigeria's Hausa. > > The proliferation of African languages on the > internet is giving these languages > a new breath of life. > > The internet has provided a platform for Africans to > communicate with friends, > relatives and in the diaspora in their indigenous > languages. > > Several Africans now maintain blogs where they write > in different African > languages. 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