In my written task about Chinua Achebe's statements on English as a lingua franca throughout Africa I tried to express Achebe's opinion. He has a strong opinion on certain topics. Therefore, I used questions that were suitable for those topics. I paid special attention to the fact that he is against the damage colonizers have done to the African society but still accepts English as a lingua franca. He is fully aware of the importance of the English language in everyday life in Africa. He also values the connection between language and culture a lot. According to that, I tried to show that in the interview with Chinua Achebe. In the last question, I stress Achebe's statement to keep writing about the political injustice that has been done to the African society.
Chinua Achebe, an African novelist, poet, critic and political activist with a strong opinion about the influence of English throughout Africa and linguistic imperialism. He is the man that wrote Things Fall Apart, the novel that is being taught at schools all over the world and the man that is called father of African literature.
Question.
How do you feel about English as a lingua franca in Africa?.
Response.
English is a very interesting language for me. This language was brought to us by our colonizers created a lingua franca between Africa and other countries which, at first, was not there. Therefore, I believe that the influence of English language has been rather positive. 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. Our English is different. We use English words, use English sentences, but our history and experience contrasts those of the English speaking community in the Western World. We, colonials and ex-colonials, are prejudiced about the English language due to negative experiences in the past. This is something which the world has to cope with even though they do not always want to.
