AFRICAN ENGLISH

AFRICAN ENGLISH Short form AfrE. The English language as used in Africa. In principle, the term can refer to English used anywhere from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope, including in Egypt by speakers of Arabic, in Nigeria by speakers of Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba, and in the Republic of South Africa by speakers of Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and other regional languages, as well as by settlers of British origin. In practice, however, the term is usually restricted to Black Africa, especially to ex-British colonies, with three subcategories: WEST AFRICAN ENGLISH (Cameroon, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, with Liberia as a special case because of its American associations), EAST AFRICAN ENGLISH (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and perhaps Sudan), and Southern African English (Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe, with South Africa as a special case because of its history and ethnic diversity).

In the second sense, the term is open to two further interpretations: as either all forms of English since the establishment of trading posts in the 17c, including pidgins and creoles, or only the forms spoken and written by educated Black Africans after some territories were administered by the British (such as Ghana and Nigeria) and/or settled by the British (such as Kenya and Zimbabwe). If the first sense is adopted, English has been in Africa for nearly 400 years. If the second sense is adopted, English in Africa dates from the mid-19c. However the term is interpreted, the reality and worth of an indigenized African English (with subvarieties such as Kenyan English and Nigerian English) are controversial matters, asserted by some, denied by others, advocated by some and denounced by others. English is in daily use for many purposes in 18 sub-Saharan countries (including as a lingua franca between speakers of different indigenous languages), and reflects all manner of local and regional influences. It is also taught as a second language in francophone countries. To discuss such matters, the term African English seems inescapable.

History

The English pidgins and creoles of West Africa have been the product of contacts between Africans and Europeans who were concerned at first with trade and later with colonialism. These varieties were significant not only in West Africa but also in the development of creoles elsewhere, particularly in the New World. Educated AfrE, however, evolved out of the formal teaching of English as a second language during the colonial era, when the grammar–translation method was the dominant approach to language learning and the teaching of English literature was central to all advanced work. Most teachers were British, with little or no knowledge of indigenous languages. During this period, the language was taught to multilingual Africans by multidialectal Britons, so that two kinds of variation were present from the start. Multilingualism and the difficulty of establishing a single national African language in each of the countries concerned made it easy to impose and then continue the use of English as the language for education, administration, and pan-regional communication.

Like French, Portuguese, and Spanish in other colonies, English became the medium of communication between the administration and its educated subjects as well as the prized vehicle of upward mobility. Formal education was a primary agent in its spread to the relatively few Africans admitted to the school system. As a result, English became the shared language of the colonial establishment and a Western-educated élite, while such African lingua francas as Hausa and Swahili continued to serve the everyday needs of the masses. Contact between standard English and these lingua francas (including the pidgin and creole Englishes of West Africa) has added to the complexity of AfrE and provided it with a range of situations in which diglossia, code-switching, and borrowing have been common.

Creative writing

As in other former colonial societies, creative writing has contributed to the emergence and recognition of AfrE as a distinct variety or group of varieties. In attempting to transcreate African cultures through their literary works in English, African writers have found it necessary to adapt and indigenize certain aspects of the language, including both lexicon and narrative style. The work of the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe is an example of such creative indigenization. He has observed:
My answer to the question, can an African ever learn English well enough to be able to use it effectively in creative writing? is certainly yes. If on the other hand you ask: Can he ever learn to use it like a native speaker? I should say: I hope not. It is neither necessary nor desirable for him to be able to do so. The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost (Transition 18, 1965).

This adaptation of the language to accommodate the African cultural experience, combined with the unconscious structural adjustments attendant on language contact and foreign-language learning, accounts for the development of an English that is distinctively African.

The contemporary situation

English is an official language of 16 countries: in West Africa Cameroon (with French), Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone; in East Africa Sudan (with Arabic), Uganda; in Southern Africa Botswana, Lesotho (with Sesotho), Malawi (with Chichewa), Namibia, South Africa (with Afrikaans and nine indigenous languages), Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. In Kenya and Tanzania, Swahili is the official language, English the second language and medium of higher education. Because of its official role and use by the media, standard English occupies a privileged place in the stratification of languages in these regions, but is by and large a minority language learned mainly through formal education. Depending on situation, the choice of code to be used in a conversation is generally a local language, a national language or lingua franca, or English. Other elements in such a range of choices are the pidgins and creoles of English in West Africa and of Afrikaans in South Africa and Namibia. Because of the large number of countries and the vast distances and considerable cultural differences involved, it is not easy to list examples of usages that are true for AfrE as a whole, but some generalizations are possible.

Pronunciation

(1) Non-rhotic and generally syllable-timed. (2) West African speakers tend to have antepenultimate word stress as in 'condition, East and Southern African speakers to have penultimate word stress as in main'tenance, reflecting that of the Bantu languages. (3) By and large, there is a reduced system of five to seven vowels /i, e, a, o, u/ and perhaps /ɔ, ɛ/, with such homophones as bit/beat (sometimes distinguished by length), had/hard as /had/, full/fool as /ful/, and cut/court/caught as /kɔt/. Individual items may be variously realized: bed as /bed/ or /bɛd/, bird as /bed/ or /bɔd/. (4) The consonants /ɵ, ð/, are usually realized in West Africa as /t/ and /d/ (‘tree of dem’ for three of them), in East and Southern Africa as /s/ and /z/ (‘sree of zem’ for three of them). Useful/youthful and breeze/breathe may be homophones, having the first pronunciation for both members of each pair. (5) The nasal /ŋ/ is often pronounced as /n/ or /ŋg/ (‘singgin’ for singing). (6) The consonants /l/ and /r/ are often exchanged (‘load’ for road, ‘rolly’ for lorry, ‘fright’ for flight), but this is becoming rare in West Africa. In parts of Nigeria, there is an exchange of /l/ and /n/, as in lomba wan for number one. (7) Word-final consonant clusters are often simplified: ‘nest’ for next, ‘nees’ for needs.

Grammar

The discussion of syntax tends to centre on deviation from standard English rather than a consideration of distinctively AfrE forms. Features include: (1) Sporadic countable use of usually uncountable nouns: firewoods for bits of firewood, furnitures for pieces of furniture, correspondences for letters. (2) The inconsistent omission of the plural in some contexts: Madam X gave birth to triplet. (3) A tendency to repeat words for emphasis and rhetorical purposes: Do it small small Do it slowly, bit by bit; What you say, you say; My boy, I see what I see; They blamed them, they blamed them for all the troubles that have befallen our land. (4) A common use of resumptive pronoun subjects: My daughter she is attending that school; My father he is very tall. (5) Yes–no questions typically answered to accord with form rather than meaning: Hasn't he left yet?—Yes, He hasn't; Didn't you break that?—Yes, I didn't. (6) Simple verbs often used instead of their phrasal-verb derivatives: crop crop up, pick pick up, leave leave out, leave in.

Vocabulary

(1) Words and phrases borrowed from local languages: West African oga master, boss (Yoruba); South African madumbi tubers (Zulu), East African pombe local traditional beer (Swahili). (2) Hybrids from English and local languages: Southern African lobola-beast, from Nguni ukolobola (to give dowry), an enemy who uses a bride price as a means of exploitation while feigning friendship, kwela music, from Xhosa kwela (to get moving), penny-whistle music; East African mabenzi people and wabenzi, from Swahili, people who own Mercedes-Benz cars, the rich. (3) Loan translations from local languages: West African chewing stick a piece of wood used as a toothbrush, cornstick a corncob, tight friend a close friend, intimate, mami water a female water spirit, enstool to enthrone, destool to overthrow (a chief), with derivatives enstoolment, destoolment. (4) Semantic shift in the use of everyday words: Nigerian and Cameroonian in state pregnant, Nigerian to have long legs to wield power and influence, West African high life local music similar to jazz, Kenyan thank you reply to ‘goodbye’, East African beat me a picture take my photograph, and It's/that's porridge It's/that's a piece of cake.

Style

(1) AfrE, especially in works of fiction and the media, is marked by the use of African proverbs and figurative usage, and by a narrative style characteristic of African rhetoric, using titles, praise words, and special epithets: My brother, son of my fathers, you have failed; You are mighty, my brother, mighty and dangerous; Do you blame a vulture for perching over a carcass?; Father, isn't it true that a wise man becomes wiser by borrowing from other people's heads? Isn't it true that a rich man becomes richer through the toils of those he exploits? (2) It is frequently marked by codemixing involving various lingua francas: ‘He paraded me to the world, I'ogolonto’ (Igbo ‘stark-naked’, in Wole Soyinka's Kongi's Harvest, 1967); ‘Each feared onwana wa rikutene—a bastard child’ (in Abel Mwanga's Nyangeta: The Name from the Calabash, 1976). This mixing may also include the use of pidgin: ‘“He no be like dat,” said Joseph. “Him no gentleman. Not fit take bribe”’ ( Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease, 1960).

English influence

The influence of English on African languages varies considerably, depending on the extent of contact in an area. In some languages, such as those in the francophone zones, English has supplied very few words: for example, forms of kitchen, matches, and school. In others, such as Hausa, Shona, and Swahili, because of bilingualism and code-mixing, the influence may have affected not only vocabulary but also structure. Anglicisms typically occur in such registers as administration, education, finance, and technology, such as: Hausa cifjoji chief judge, satifiket certificate, dala dollar, injin engine; Shona inispekita inspector, chikoro school, cheki cheque, rori lorry; and Swahili meneja manager, jiografia geography, pensheni pension, beteri battery.

Conclusion

As English continues to spread, through education, the media, and administrative institutions, with Africans serving as models for Africans, the distinctness of the varieties subsumed under the term African English is likely to become more evident and the varieties are more likely to be recognized as legitimate by both their own users and the rest of the English speaking world. See SOUTH AFRICAN ENGLISH.