African Languages

V

Nilo-Saharan Family

The Nilo-Saharan language family covers much of the eastern Sahara, the upper Nile Valley, areas around Lake Victoria in east central Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Languages in this family are spoken by an estimated 18 million to 30 million people. Linguists have classified the Nilo-Saharan family into various subgroups. Nilo-Saharan languages display such considerable diversity, however, that their unity as a group and internal divisions within the group remain controversial.

Proposed subgroups within the Nilo-Saharan family include, among others, Saharan, Songhai, Central Sudanic, and East Sudanic (including the former Nilotic subgroup). The Saharan subgroup includes Kanuri, spoken in Niger and Nigeria, and Zaghawa, spoken in Chad and Sudan. Songhai languages, which form the westernmost subgroup in this family, have several million speakers in Mali and Niger. Songhay and Zarma are among the languages in this subgroup. The Songhai subgroup has no close relative, and some scholars place it in the Mande subgroup group of the Niger-Congo family. Languages in the Central Sudanic group are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the Eastern Sudanic subgroup are the Nilotic languages, spoken along the Nile and Chari rivers. Major Nilotic languages include Dinka, spoken in Sudan; Luo, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania; and Maasai, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania. The Nubian language, also classified as Eastern Sudanic, is spoken in Sudan and southern Egypt.

Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal, like most languages in the Niger-Congo family. Some Nilo-Saharan languages add both prefixes and suffixes to verbs; others add only suffixes. However, Nilo-Saharan languages do not have a noun class agreement system like the Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family.

VI

Khoisan Family

The Khoisan languages make up the smallest African language family, with only about 200,000 speakers of its 30 or so languages. Most of these languages are spoken by the Khoikoi and San peoples of southern Africa. The language with the most speakers is Nama, spoken in Namibia and South Africa. Two other languages in this family, Sandawe and Hadza, are spoken far to the north, in Tanzania.

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The Khoisan languages are best known for their unusual click consonants; in some Khoisan languages nearly every word begins with a click. Speakers produce these clicks by sucking in air. By the positioning of the tongue and by the way air is released, distinctive kinds of clicks can be produced. One click is made by pressing the lips together and then releasing them by sucking in air. The resulting click resembles the sound of a kiss.

VII

African Writing Systems

The three writing systems native to Africa include the Coptic script of ancient Egypt, the Ge’ez script of Ethiopia, and the Vai script of West Africa. Coptic, a script based on the Greek alphabet, replaced the ancient Egyptian writing system of hieroglyphs in about the 3rd century ad. The Ge’ez script, which dates back to ad 300, is used in Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia. In this syllabic writing system, each character stands for a syllable rather than a single sound. The Vai script, which is also syllabic, is used in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Many African languages, including Hausa, Swahili, and Bambara, borrowed the Arabic script for writing. Arabic script, however, is not well suited to writing in African languages. Arabic has only three vowels, expressed phonetically with a, i, and u, whereas Swahili has five vowels, a, e, i, o, and u. In addition, the Swahili consonants p, g, ch, and v do not exist in Arabic. The Arabic script was largely replaced by the Roman alphabet (used for English and many European languages), which was brought to Africa by Christian missionaries and European colonists.

VIII

The Art of Oral Communication

An oral tradition is universal among African language groups, facilitating the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next. Knowledge about iron smelting, farming, and animal herding, for example, has been passed down orally. In addition, greetings, eulogies (poems of praise), story telling, proverbs, and riddles all contribute to the rich oral tradition of the African people. In all African cultures, a greeting encounter is an art in oral communication. Greetings go back and forth for several turns, are highly involved, and always indicate the age-status of participants. Special greeting forms and gestures come into play when one of the participants has a higher age-status. In Swahili, for example, a younger person greets an adult with the word shikamoo, meaning “I hold your legs.” The younger person usually bows slightly while saying shikamoo. In Yoruba, a younger person must use the honorific pronoun E when greeting an older person. If the younger person is a young woman, she must kneel; and if a young man, he must lie down on the ground.

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