Is it literature written by Africans, literature that depicts the African experience? Does African literature have to be written in African languages? ... The legacy of colonialism has left the African writer with a dilemma with regard to the language choice in writing. In his article 1, Obi Wali challenges that "any true African literature has to be written in an African language and that "uncritical acceptance of English and French as the inevitable medium for educated African writing, is misdirected and has no chance of advancing African literature"2. ... The African writer, a product col...

• Word Count: 2193
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

He is fully aware of the importance of the English language in everyday life in Africa. ... But we should remember at all times, that we have a lot of native languages in Africa and English has never been one of them. ... Why should Africa not convert to English as its' native language? ... But that does not mean that we should forget about our own native languages in Africa, and therefore also our culture. The enormous variety of native languages throughout Africa creates an immense diversity of cultures, and therefore literature. ...

• Word Count: 972
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Africa is large, complex, and diverse. ... Today, almost all of Africa is ruled by Africans. Large numbers of Africans live in modern cities. ... The language of the IGBO is also called IGBO. It is a member of the Kwa language subfamily of West Africa, which was developed as a separate language about 4,500 years ago. ...

• Word Count: 1296
• Approx Pages: 5

Knowing many languages, is a fact of life in almost every community in Africa. ... Clearly most Africans know at least two languages. ... The peoples of Africa speak around one thousand African languages, and there are more than fifty African nations, each with its own history and unique mixture of cultures and languages. ... More than one-third of the people used languages in Africa are Bantu languages. ... The most extensive Chadic language is Hausa, and is the second most spoken language spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. ...

• Word Count: 1463
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

This is very true in the case of Africa. ... For Senghor, negritude is one's identification of one's blackness without reference to culture, language, or geography. ... Senghor believed there would be one world civilization, unique and universal one, through the process of enrichment, after the melting and mixings of people, race, and languages. ... Rather he viewed the blend of African and European cultural influences to be a practical method of improving Africa. ... He also believed in an African Aristocracy. ...

• Word Count: 1129
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

People often refer to Africa as the Dark Continent, meaning that Africans were uncivilized, unsophisticated, and ignorant people. West Africa, East Africa, and ancient Zimbabwe are examples that refute this stereotype. ... East Africa is another example that shows that African nations were not "dark". Kilwa was a city located in East Africa. ... Kilwa people wrote poetry in different languages and sent paintings to China. ...

• Word Count: 492
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The thing that is especially interesting about the use of proverbs in African American writings is its suggestion of a movement from the written language back to the oral. ... When Africans were taken from their homeland and brought to America as slaves, they also brought with them their individual cultures, languages and customs. ... Most slave owners forbade their slaves from speaking their own language, and forced them to speak English. ... Thus oral tradition gives more emphasis to the rhythm of the language, with repetition and short phrases making the stories, riddles and proverbs easier...

• Word Count: 2075
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Africa is very a diverse continent. It is divided into 55 countries which have their own language and their own culture. ... Each kingdom had its own king, language and beliefs. ... Before they came Africans all had different languages. Europeans came in and established a language which mostly all people learned. ...

• Word Count: 891
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Once I heard from a friend that there was a class called Geography of Africa I considered it my chance to receive Gordon Rule credit and explore the foreign world of Africa. ... Having over 1,000 languages throughout the region, it has become quite effective to group them based on their dialect. Supposedly there are four major language families in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Afro-Asiatic families. Imagine going from one state to another in the U.S and each one uses a different language than the next. ... After learning all about Africa and much of its ...

• Word Count: 1618
• Approx Pages: 6

Ebonics: The Native Language of the Black American For the modern African American the idea of being fluent in a language unique to his or her culture as well as English never crosses his or her mind. ... In fact, most African Americans are bilingual and speak probably one of the hardest languages known to man. ... Likewise, even though the English language was forced upon the African slaves, they still maintained parts of their native languages by using them to learn English. Because of this, African Americans" language resembles that of West Africans more than it does English. .....

• Word Count: 752
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

AFRICA ART Since the beginning Africa Art has played in integral part in American history. There are a variety of Africa art. ... By around the 9th century A.D., Africans, Arabs, and Persians who lived and traded on the coast had developed a lingua franca, Swahili, or Kiswahili, a language based on the Bantu language Sabaki that uses Arab and Persian loan words. ... Moreover, most African art is made of wood. ... There are many highlights to Africa art. ...

• Word Count: 1298
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

This characteristic of speech is spoken especially (but not exclusively) in African American communities in urban areas and in the south. ... Ebonics is not a poor sister to English but a language system with roots in West Africa (Perry and Delpit 2). This is a language that evolved in a struggle and under conditions of extreme oppression, a creative response to a slave society that did it's best to erase African language and culture (Perry and Delpit 2). ... It is also important for everybody to know, that not all African Americans speak Ebonics; there are non-African Americans who do s...

• Word Count: 747
• Approx Pages: 3

Characteristics of language Definitions of language Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and language scholar, stated: "Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words. ... Normally, people acquire a single language initially "their first language, or mother tongue, the language spoken by their parents or by those with whom they are brought up from infancy. ... Language, as described above, is species-specific to man. ... The science of language is known as linguistics. ...

• Word Count: 8535
• Approx Pages: 34
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The language spoken by the migrating grain gatherers were ancestors of the large family of afro-Asiatic languages. ... They spoke a language similar to the present day Bantu languages. It is believed the people who spoke the original Bantu language must have left northeastern Nigeria and spread quite rapidly throughout most of central and southern Africa. ... It wasn't until Africa came out of the colonial that African-Americans demanded equality and historians of all races and nationalities readjusted their view of Africa. ... The principal African carriers of the trade within Africa...

• Word Count: 1996
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Africans were forced to learn European languages, history and religion and disregard their own. ... Then they lost their African names, languages, religions and customs. ... Upon arrival in the West Indies the Africans were experiencing several different language groups from the many tribes and for the first time they were exposed to a new culture and language of the Europeans. ... " This seems to suggest that the African languages were devalued due to its decreasing use and the inability of the creole Africans to understand and speak them. The planters tried to teach the enslaved popula...

• Word Count: 2280
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In pre-colonial Africa kinship and inheritance provided the bases of organization of many African communities. ... There are eleven officially recognized languages. ... It is one of the eleven common spoken languages but it only ranks 5th out of the eleven spoken languages. ... This new generation of African American s will not know Africa the same way their parents did. ... Relying on that language she sued for emancipation. ...

• Word Count: 1350
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The history of southern Africa can also be seen as the history of Afrikaans. ... The history of Afrikaans becomes the history of Southern Africa. ... Van Riebeeck made a halfway stop for these ships at South Africa. ... This unique language "just grew' from the soil of South Africa. ... Britain had South Africa as a colony of the queen. ...

• Word Count: 1024
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Prince Henry helped unlock the secrets of Africa. ... By the 1880s a "scramble for Africa" occurred. ... Africans learned of the faith through devout Christians who traveled to Africa on a mission to teach their religion. ... Livingstone treated the Africans with respect. He learned their languages and customs and explored a great portion of the continent. ...

• Word Count: 2251
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: High School

African Cultures Africa has more than 800 languages native to its continent. ... The most common languages in South Africa are Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu, and Swahili (African Languages). ... Approximately 8.8 million people speak this language (African Languages). ... It is the national language of Tanzania and the official language of Kenya (African Languages). ... Approximately 50 million people speak this language (African Languages). ...

• Word Count: 1186
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

See Africans cared about their family and land. ... They also spoke different languages, and Europeans were fully clothed while Africans were partially clothed. In similarity there were some Africans that hunted other Africans just like Europeans to save their lives and land to survive. Africans also had slaves to. ... Also, because there was plenty of land in Africa, which made the African people important, especially to the Europeans. ...

• Word Count: 1029
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Stacy Adams ENGL233.001 Herbert Martin's speech "The African American Oral Tradition" is about how African American writers imply oral forms in their literary works. ... Martin begins by explaining the language of the African Americans. ... When they transferred the language that they heard to paper, a new style of language was formed which was referred to as dialect. ... Because of the bad stigma attached to dialect, African Americans did not like to be associated with this style of language. ... African Americans learned language in a unique way because they learned under di...

• Word Count: 703
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Stacy Adams ENGL233.001 Herbert Martin's speech "The African American Oral Tradition" is about how African American writers imply oral forms in their literary works. ... Martin begins by explaining the language of the African Americans. ... When they transferred the language that they heard to paper, a new style of language was formed which was referred to as dialect. ... Because of the bad stigma attached to dialect, African Americans did not like to be associated with this style of language. ... African Americans learned language in a unique way because they learned under di...

• Word Count: 703
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

One person could belong to a lineage, a clan, a village, religious group, chiefdom, and a language group. ... In the light of this, African customs, religion, language, heritage and way of life was discouraged. It can be seen that the main Holy Grail was to change the identity of Africans and by slowly assimilating Africans into European culture; a common example to illustrate this is the changing of African names to Christian ones. ... As Jomo Kenyatta illustrates: "When Europeans came to Africa, they had the bible and the Africans had the land. ... Impact of Racial Thinking in Africa ...

• Word Count: 2491
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Most of the languages of western Africa sought of Sahara are now believed to be related to the vast Bantu family of languages. ... Afrikaans, is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa, or Cape Dutch, is principally derived from the Zuid-Holland dialect of mid- 17th century Dutch settlers in South Africa. It gained loanwords from English, French, and German and from African languages and underwent grammatical simplification. In The Languages of Africa (1963) the linguists traced the historical origin and development of African languages, and classified them into four major groups: Ni...

• Word Count: 1183
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Both poems are based on traditional superstitions and it is evident from the title, Abiku, which is a word from the Yoruba language of Nigeria that is used to describe a child that dies and is reborn, usually multiple times. ... Hence, we see Soyinka and Clark as well as many other African poets bringing their cultural superstitions to their literary works, even though most of them are written in European languages. ... The juxtaposition of spiritual and human language used in the poem lets the readers know that both the spiritual and the human are present in this Abiku child. ... Also, it is...

• Word Count: 1278
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate