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of the people involved. He wishes to see this “Yorubaness” retained
in Nigerian English, especially when the English is being used as a
lingua France between fellow Africans.
Englishes in South Africa
English has had a longer official link with South Africa than
with Nigeria. The British occupied “Cape Colony” in 1795. Lord
Somerset, the Governor of the colony, recruited large numbers of
schoolmasters from Britain to ensure that English established a firm
hold there. This was part of an official policy of Anglicisation that
sought to replace the language of the previous colonisers, Dutch,
with English in all spheres of public life. It mandated the use of
English in all official documents. Not surprisingly, this policy upset
the Dutch settlers and lingering resentment against the downgrading
of Dutch was one of the reasons for the Boer wars of 1899-1902,
won by the British.
In 1910, the Union of South Africa was established and
English and Dutch (replaced by the name of Afrikaans in 1925) were
made official languages, although English remained more important,
especially in education. However, things changed in 1948, the year
that saw the start of the Afrikanerisation of South Africa. Perhaps the
most significant policy to ensure this was the infamous 1953 Bantu
Education Act which marked an attempt by the apartheid
government to reassert the importance of Afrikaans in public life. It
entrenched mother-tongue instruction for blacks in the early years of
education and greatly increased the role of Afrikaans in secondary
schools. Blacks saw the policy as an attempt to create a semi-literate
workforce and reinforce apartheid, and so opposed it vehemently.
Their opposition to the policy led to the Soweto uprising of 1976,
after which schools were allowed to choose their own medium of
instruction after the first four years of primary school. English reemerged as the overwhelming choice. It is important to not,
therefore, that English is, perhaps surprisingly, seen as a language of
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liberation by many black South Africans while Afrikaans is seen as
the language of colonial oppression and apartheid.
The Republic of South Africa was established in 1961 and
Afrikaans and English remained the only two official languages. The
situation remained unchanged until the establishment of the new
South Africa in 1994 under the inaugural presidency of Nelson
Mandela. The 1994 constitution granted official status to 11
languages, English and Afrikaans along with nine African languages
(Ndbele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa and
Zulu). In common with other African countries, several varieties of
English are spoken in South Africa. A major difference, however, is
that English is the first language of some 3.5 milliom people out of a
total population of about 41 million. The L1 speakers are made up of
1.7 million whites, 1 million Indians and more than half a million
people of mixed race. These L1 speakers speak different varieties of
English, however, and among the varieties spoken in South Africa
are White South African English (WSAE), Indian South African
English (ISAE) and Coloured (or mixed-race) South African English
(CSAE). In common with all regional varieties of English, these
comprise a sociolinguistic continuum of ‘conservative-respectable-
extreme’ mirroring the terms ‘cultivated-general-broad’ given to the
Australian continuum.
Conservative: used by the ‘first families’, the upper and
middle classes and “serious” news readers. This variety reflects RP
influence.
Respectable: this is the local standard and used by lecturers,
teachers and professionals.
Extreme: this is used by people of lower economic status and
has much in common with second-language Afrikaans English.
Linguistic features of ISAE
Indian South African English is a variety that has shifted over
time from being a second language to a first language. The first
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Indian migrants to South Africa arrived in 186 and very few of them
knew any English at all. Over time, however, English gradually
became an L1 so that by the 1960s and 1970s, English became the
first language of majority of Indian schoolchildren. ISAE has
remained a distinct variety for several reasons. First, the apartheid
policy lasted from 1948 until the early 1990s kept Indian children
away from L1 speakers of English descent. Second, ISAE, while
sharing some similarities with Indian English, is also distinct from it,
primarily because it operates across the sociolinguistic continuum so
that it has a very colloquial form as well as a more educated form.
Mesthrie describes this continuum using the terms “acrolect”,
“mesolect” and “basilect” and shows that educated speakers can
switch between these as and when appropriate. The differences ISAE
exhibit are much greater than those exhibited by other new
Englishes.
Linguistic features of BSAE and African Englishes
The most widely spoken variety of English in South African
is, as one would expect, Black South African English (BSAE). Seven
million blacks have a command of English as another language and
BSAE is increasingly viewed as a variety in its own right and its
prestige is rising. Despite this, BSAE currently offers no automatic
access to power, although the prospects are very good for greater
acceptance of variability in educational contexts and in business.
The linguistic features of BSAE are in many respects similar
to those of other African Englishes. There is no distinction between
certain short and long vowel sounds, between “I” and “i:”, for
example. It is non-rhotic and leans towards syllable rather than
stress-timing. More distinctively, the vowel sounds in the words
“strut”, “bath” and “palm” are all pronounced as /a/ and those in
/trap/, “dress”, and “nurse” as /e/.
Common linguistic features of African Englishes
Pronunciation
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♦ Fricatives tend to be avoided.
♦ Length differences in vowel are levelled and not used to
distinguish meaning.
♦ The central vowels /ʌ/, /ə:/ and /ə/ as in ‘but’, ‘bird’ and
‘about’ become more open as in /ɔ/, /ə/, and /a/.
♦ Dipthings tend to become monopthings, so that /ei/ and
/əʊ/ become /e/ and /o/ respectively.
♦ Consonant clusters either drop consonants or insert
vowels to split them.
Grammar
♦ Inflectional endings are not always added to the verb but
general, regular and unmarked forms are used instead.
♦ Complex tenses, such as the past perfect and certain
conditionals, tend to be avoided.
♦ The use of verb+ing constructions is extended to all verbs
to give examples such as “I am having your book” and “I was not
liking the food in the hotel”.
♦ Phrasal and prepositional verbs are used differently, for
example, “I will pick you at 8 o’clock tonight”.
♦ Verb complementation varies freely to give phrases such
as ‘allow him go’ and “they made him to clean the whole yard”.
♦ Noun phrases are not always marked for number and case
or are treated differently, to give “informations”, “a cattle”, “an
advice”.
♦ Relative pronouns (“whom”, “whose”) are avoided to give
‘adult education which its main purpose is to help adults. …”
♦ The use of plural is overgeneralized (“luggages”,
“advices”).
♦ Articles and determiners are often omitted (“I am going to
post office”).
♦ Pronouns are not always distinguished by gender.
♦ Adjectives may be used as adverbs to give “I can obtain
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the food easy”.
♦ Pronoun copying is common (“many of the fish, they have
different colours”).
♦ Negative yes/no questions are confirmed by responding to
the form of the question so that the answer to “he isn’t good/”
becomes “yes (he isn’t)”.
♦ There are invariant question tags, for example “isn’t it?”
and “you wanted to leave for Nairobi, not so?”
♦ The interrogative word order is retained in indirect speech
to give “I cannot tell you what is the matter”.
♦ There is freer word order so that “in my family, we are
many” becomes common.
It is remarkable how many of these features are also common
in other varieties of English.
QUESTIONS
1.
What role does colonialism play in the current hierarchical
status of English in Sub-Saharan Africa?
2.
How do African Englishes reflect cultural concepts that may
not have direct equivalents in British or American English?
3.
What are the main differences between "educated" African
English and pidgin/creole varieties in Sub-Saharan Africa?
4.
What role does English play in education systems across SubSaharan Africa, and how does this affect language attitudes
toward indigenous languages?
5.
How might the future development of African Englishes be
influenced by globalization, digital communication, and
youth culture?
EXERCISES
Ex. 1. Read the sentence below. In the light of the discussion
of slave culture and language, do you think there is anything
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especially significant about the meanings of these Africanisms and
their use in Jamaica?
Whether or not the African languages were abandoned, it seems
that their influence can be traced in creoles. Words such as adru (a
medicinal herb) from Twi, himba (an edible wild yam) from Ibo, and
dingki (a funeral ceremony) from Kongo have all been found in Jamaican
Creole.
Ex. 2. The following passage comes from the South African
newspaper Mail and Guardian (2–8 February 2001, p. 13).
Health authorities may try to curtail or even outlaw the annual
Swazi bacchanal that commences with the arrival of buganu, the
traditional brew fermented from the fruit of the maganu tree.
But even in the light of a cholera outbreak that may be worsened
by a brew made from tainted water, the summertime overindulgence
that inspires legendary public sexual escapades is not likely to be
inhibited.
“Nobody is going to stop the buganu from flowing,” says Sipho
Matsebula, a bus conductor whose shoulders bulk up at this time of year
as he hefts large drums of the country brew to the tops of long-haul
buses for delivery to urban centres, including Johannesburg.
What makes this a South African text? Can you distinguish
between the setting that the text discusses and the language in which the
text is written? How would you have to change this text to avoid it being
a South African text?
Ex. 3. Read the following thumbnail sketch of Namibia’s pre-
independence background, and the brief account of its language policy
history. Think about what policy makers would have been weighing up
when they made their decisions to have English as the only official
language, and to designate it as the only medium of instruction in state
schools after the third grade. What would they have seen as the
advantages of prioritizing English? What do you think the problems
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would have been with implementing the policy in parliament, the civil
service and schools? Can you think of any solutions to those problems?
Language policy in Namibia
Namibia is located in the south-western region of Africa,
bordered by Angola, Botswana and South Africa. Most of the area
that is now Namibia was a German colony from 1894 to 1915, and
German was the language of administration. During the First World
War, neighbouring South Africa occupied the territory, and in the
post-war deliberations, South Africa was appointed by the League of
Nations to administer it. After the Second World War, the United
Nations (which had superseded the League of Nations) wished to
withdraw South Africa’s mandate, but South Africa refused to
surrender its control over the country. It continued to run it on lines
similar to those operating in South Africa, including the
institutionalising of racial discrimination, emphasising ethnic
differences among the indigenous population, repressing black
political organisations, and denying the franchise to black people.
South Africa resorted to military force to maintain its presence and to
counter the growing liberation movement.
Although both English and Afrikaans were official languages
during the period of South African control (1915–1989), in fact the
much-resented military and administrative control was exercised
largely through Afrikaans, the South African official language most
strongly associated with that country’s white nationalist government.
This led to negative associations with Afrikaans among oppressed
indigenous people. But in spite of that, they were willing to learn it
because it was the main language of schooling from the fourth grade
on, and therefore the main language of access to employment. As a
result, Afrikaans became known widely enough to function as a
lingua franca in most of the country. None of the indigenous
languages could compete with it in that regard. Nor could English,
which was rarely used except in a few urban areas and was the home
language of less than 2 per cent of the population.
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However, English became the lingua franca of Namibian
political exiles and it was the language through which most of them
furthered their education while in exile. The liberation movement
was led by the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO),
founded in 1960. Its public meetings were banned from 1963.
Thereafter many of its members went into exile because of severe
repression. While in exile, they developed a language policy as part
of their vision for a new democratic order within the country, and
active participation in the globalising world (published by the United
Nations Institute for Namibia (UNIN) in 1981). This policy formed
the basis for the one adopted at independence in 1990.
The new constitution declared English the sole official
language but, according to Ndjoze-Ojo (2004), it was deliberately
not explicit about the status and roles of other languages. The
wording gave the impression that permission could be given for their
use in administration, education and judicial functions where
appropriate. The language policy for education allowed for the
continuation of mother tongue instruction up to the end of Grade 3,
and stipulated that in all state schools English was to be rapidly
phased in to replace Afrikaans as the sole medium of instruction in
senior primary and secondary schooling. The new policy demanded
that rote learning be replaced by interactive teaching and learning in
languages and other subjects.
At independence in 1990, Namibia had an estimated
population of 1.3 million. Except for a few urban areas, population
density was low. Distances between settlements were vast, and road
and communication infrastructures were not strong. There were
approximately thirty indigenous languages, half of which did not
have a written form.
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APPENDIX
Keys and comments to exercises.
Topic 1.
Ex. 1. Comment:
You may well have started your definition by saying that
English is the language spoken in England. This is how Dr Johnson
defined it in his dictionary of the English language, composed back
in the mid-eighteenth century:
ENGLISH. adj. Belonging to England; thence English is the
language of England.
Of course, in today’s world, English is much more than this.
English has spread extensively in the two and a half centuries since
Johnson’s time. Modern dictionaries mostly augment Johnson’s
definition by adding something about the global scope of the
language. The Chambers Dictionary (11th edition), for example,
defines it as:
A Germanic language spoken in the British Isles, USA, most
parts of the Commonwealth, etc.
while the Oxford English Dictionary extends this slightly
further:
Of or relating to the West Germanic language spoken in
England and also used in many varieties throughout the world
As we can see, these definitions all concentrate on a number of
key elements – and your own definition may well have focused on
some or all of these as well. These elements are: the communities
with which the language is most associated (it’s the national
language of the UK, the USA, etc.); its history (i.e. being of
Germanic origin); and the way it’s now used in various places
around the world. In other words, all these definitions link the
language with the people who speak it now or who spoke it in the
past. As such, they’re all social definitions of the language –
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describing it not in terms of the structure it has (they don’t mention,
for example, that it predominantly uses a subject-verb-object word
order), but in terms of the communities who use it and – importantly,
who identify with it. That’s to say, the language doesn’t exist as an
abstract entity out there in the ether. It’s something people actually
use; something they both speak and write/read (although these
definitions mostly privilege the notion of speaking). And it’s
something which plays a significant role in their lives. For this
reason any investigation into the language will involve an
investigation into the social and historical context in which the
language flourishes. In other words, when studying the language we
also need to study the people who use the language – we need to
study how they use it, why they use it and what they think about it.
Ex. 2. Comment:
The example is in Scots, the traditional Germanic language
spoken in Lowland Scotland, the Northern Isles and parts of Ulster.
Along with Gaelic and Scottish English, this is one of the three main
languages spoken in Scotland. It has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon
dialects which arrived on the British mainland in the fifth century, so
it’s related to English but has developed mostly independently. Some
people consider it to be a dialect of English, while others regard it as
an entirely separate language. These stanzas are from a poem called
“Varg” by the contemporary poet Robert Alan Jamieson. As you can
see, although some words are obviously close cousins of modern
standard British English (e.g. “wark” = work; “luv” = love), for the
most part it’s quite different. And even these words which sound
similar when spoken, are spelt in non-standard ways. It also includes
some characters such as ø and æ which aren’t used in modern
standard British English. So unless you’re a Scots speaker, you’d
probably have difficulty understanding it without the translation.
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