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French is important in Africa | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nordantill Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 6825 days ago 16 posts - 54 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 21 26 April 2010 at 2:43pm | IP Logged |
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I was just going to write a reply in the thread about the French language in Rwanda. But since the thread was closed i guess I have to start a new one.
Anyhow, what i want to point out is that the French language is not actually declining in Africa. Instead it's actually gaining ground all over the continent. This may seem odd to most people since what we've been reading in this forum, and elsewhere, is that French is disappearing from one country after another.But as I want to show you the actual situation is a bit different. Before I start I just want to make some things clear. First of all, it is a sad fact that many indigenous languages in Africa are pushed aside and marginalized by the former colonial languages (English, French, Portuguese etc). And I am in no way in favor of this and I don't want to come across as some kind of supporter of French linguistic chauvinism. Th reason I post this is because many of the things written about the role of the French language in Africa is incorrect or based on misconceptions. OK let's get on to the actual topic. Before I point out some individual cases let's just have a quick look at the general situation of French. French is the official language of 24 African countries stretching almost all over Africa. In addition to that it's also the unofficial second language, and widely used, in 4 other countries (The Maghreb countries) and has a significant amount of speakers in another 10 countries or so. The total number of French-speakers in Africa is now estimated to be 115 million according to La Francophonie dans le monde (extract available here ).And some estimates even give a number twice that high. This gives French a solid foundation that is unlikely to disappear over night. And considering the rising levels of literacy the number could be as high as 600-700 million by 2050. This should put all this talk about "the decline of the French language" to rest. As a matter of fact, French is now making inroads to a number of Anglo and Lusophone countries in the region. Given the fact that French is the Lingua franca of West Africa the non-francophone countrIes in the area have to adapt themselves to this situation. Ghana is a good indicator of this, the country was a british colony and English stills serves as the official language. But because of its geographic location, all the neighbouring countries are Francophone, and it's growing interaction with the region French has become more and more widely spoken. Ghana is now a full member of Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). As a result, France and Ghana have signed an accord worth 1.8 million Euro aiming to set up French language resource centers all over the country as well as improving the overall teaching of the language. Public servants are also taught the language. The same thing is also happening in the army. An appeal has also been made to start teaching the language already in primary school. This will obviously boost the number of French speakers. It's worth remembering that the number of French speakers in the country was close to zero only a few years years ago but that 13 percent now claim to speak French. And considering the measures now being implemented this number is likely to grow. Guinea-Bissau is another good example. The country is Portuguese speaking, but in reality the most widely spoken language is a Portuguese based Creol. French is making progress here because of both geographic and political reasons. The country is surrounded by French-speaking countries and is a full member of OIF. Hence the a grwoing interest in learning French (especially among young people in Bissau). In fact some sources claim that there are more French speakers than Portuguese speakers in the country.By now more and more consider French to be the "quasi-co-official" language of the country (http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/guinee-bissau.htm). The two smaller lusophone countries in the region, Cap verde and Sao tome Y Principe are also members of OIF and are closely connected to the rest of Francophone Africa. In Sao Tome a majority (65%) of the population speaks French and the language is taught as a mandatory language at school. The same thing is true for Cape Varde although the total number of Speakers is slightly lower (but nevertheless constitutes a majority). Anglophone Gambia, being located right ih the middle of Francophone Senegal, also has an obvious interest in improving it's level of French. This is now happening (see here and here. France has also given financial support for this purpose. There are also indication that the same things are happening in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But now on to something more astonishing, the growing role of French in Nigeria. Nigeria is obviously the most important country in west Africa (and probably second only to South Africa in terms of political and economic influence on the continent). Despite a huge population that dwarfs the rest of the region, Nigeria has been compelled to follow suit and give French a more prominent role. This started already back in 1996 when Nigeria's leader Sami Abache stated that he wanted to turn Nigeria into a English/French bilingual country. Now this could of course just be some garbage coming from a megalomaniacal third-world dictator trying to get some financial backing from France. But as a matter of fact this policy has continued after Abache's death and is still being pursued. Politicians regularly declare their support for French as a co-official language. Leading sectors of Nigerian society refers to French as a necessity and several states are now making French mandatory in their curriculum. France is also helping out. Obviously a lot of work remains to be done, but the will and determination is obviously there. Now, there are countries that have already implemented the kind of the reforms and the results are interesting. Equatorial Guinea is a good illustration. In the mid-eighties this country, which happens to be the only Spanish speaking country in Africa, embarked on an ambitious programme to adopt French as a co-official language. All government offices were to be bilingual by 1992 and French was being taught all over the country. Now, more than 20 years later, the result is rather astonishing, 60% of the population speak French. Considering this, French is now present in every country(!) in West Afra. Not bad for a language that is apparently disappearing... In the thread about French in Rwanda it was stated that another domino had fallen. What domino may I ask? Outside of west Africa French is also getting more widely studied. In Angola, French is already spoken by the elite (many of whom spent years in exile in Congo, and Congo-Brazzaville) and is likely to grow because of it's co-operation with Congo and other Francophone countries (Angola is also a mameber of the regional organization for countries in southern Africa and this will of course raise the numbers of English as well). Mocambique is now a a member of OIF and countries there will be encouraged learn French. I am not trying to say that French will become dominant in these countries. Because obviously it won't. And in the case of Mocambique English will be the first foreign language learned after Portuguese. It's is worth noting that Tanzania is increasing its teaching of French. When I visited Tanzania a few years ago I came across quite a few French speakers, especially in the western part of the country. OK, now we have reached Rwanda. There's already been a long thread about this but I think there are some important things that weren't mentioned. First of all, Rwanda is one of the few monolingual countries in Africa, virtually the whole population speaks KinyaRwanda. This makes Rwanda special since there's no need of a unifying lingua franca (likE French in Cote D'ivoirE, Portuguese in Angola, English in South Africa, Swahili in Tanzania etc). That's why French was only spoken by 8% of the population, despite the fact that it was the official language for more than 80 years, taught in all schools etc. This itself will will be a great obstacle to implementing English. English is spoken by about 3 percent of the population. That's probably about the same amount of people who speak German in Italy, and one could of course imagine the problems that Italy would have if they started teaching everything in German all of a sudden. But Rwanda being an en extremely poor country faces even bigger problems, of Rwanda's 31000 primary school teachers only 4700 have been trained in English. And among the secondary teachers, 600 out of a total of 12000 have received English training. And then we should take into consideration the fact that only half of all Rwandan children make it beyond primary schools. The decision to go from French to English was political above else since most young Rwandans seems to be unispired. A more likely explanation is offered by NPR " A small handful of people speak English. But crucially, they happen to be the people who run the place. So the president, Paul Kagame, speaks, actually, not very good French but fluent English, and many of the people around him also are English speakers. The reason is that they were exiles. Of course, there was violence between Hutu and Tutsis long before 1994 in the genocide, and many Tutsis had fled the country before then, like President Kagame's family, to the English-speaking countries of Uganda and Tanzania. They grew up speaking English, and when they came back and became the government, when they won the war then ended the genocide, they brought an English-speaking culture with them". So the language switch is political decision, and not based on some grassroots movement or whatever. Rwanda is joining the East African organization where the other 3 members , Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, are English speaking. This could of course lead to a rise of more English speakers in Rwanda, but a more likely scenario is that Swahili will turn out to be the major beneficiary. Surely, the leaders will conduct their meetings in English and so on, but Swahili has already become the lingue franca of the region (as anyone who has visited the region could testify). In Tanzania, the country where Swahili is most deeply entrenched, English is playing a role in education whilst virtually all trade and inter-ethnic communication is being conducted in Swahili. Since Swahili already has a a significant number of speakers in Rwanda, as well as Burundi, cross country interaction will continue to be done in Swahili (as is already the case and pretty much always has been). Finally, Rwanda obviously has much bigger problems to struggle with than this. And to turn into some kind of linguistic battle ground strikes me as quite bizarre. Rwanda's education system would probably be better of if they would use their own language for education and then teach foreign languages (be it English, French, Japanese, Russian or whatever). Some final remarks. The French language is strong in Africa, and is also increasingly becoming an African language itself, a majority of the world's French speakers now live in Africa, and in many places French is becoming people's first language (in Abidjan , Gabon, Cameroon etc. The reason why many none Francophone is turning to French is because French has reached a critical point in Africa (particularly west and central africa). Just like people start learning Spanish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language#Latin_America ) in Brazil and English in Europe. Brazil being the biggest country in South America simply have to adjust themselves to the fact that the region is largely Spanish speaking. Germany is the largest economy in Europe but they also have to get used to the fact that business in Europe is largely conducted in English.The same thing goes for Nigeria and a bunch of other countries in Africa. Well, there's much more to say about this but my time is rather limited and I haven't even covered things like the role of French in Maghreb (which is also commonly misunderstood) or the role of French in Egypt, where 2 million people speak French. But maybe that will be a topic for another post.... Edited by nordantill on 26 April 2010 at 5:01pm 21 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 21 26 April 2010 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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Wow. It's been a long time since I have learned so much in just one post - on any forum.
Tack så mycket för det här! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jon1991 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5366 days ago 98 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 3 of 21 26 April 2010 at 4:32pm | IP Logged |
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Great post!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 4 of 21 26 April 2010 at 4:38pm | IP Logged |
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I think it would be nice if you wrote some more about Maghreb and Egypt. I enjoyed
reading that post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5341 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 5 of 21 26 April 2010 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks! I also enjoyed reading the post - I learnt so much! :) Could you also please write more about the role of French in Maghreb and Eygpt? I am very interested in this part of the world...
Btw, there was an article concerning the role of French in the International Herald Tribune last weekend, in case anyone is interested... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5340 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 6 of 21 26 April 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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You are amazing sir! Truly amazing!
Let it be known, I love you :D I was not aware there was a Spanish-speaking country in Africa lol. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bushwick Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6245 days ago 407 posts - 443 votes Speaks: German, Croatian*, English, Dutch Studies: French, Japanese | Message 7 of 21 26 April 2010 at 11:14pm | IP Logged |
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Very very nice post, thanks for sharing your knowledge in such a short and concise manner (while still linking to places for us to keep on reading). Great research, but after reading this I am also really intrigued by your mentioning of the Maghreb, it would be very nice if you could post something on that.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 21 27 April 2010 at 8:27am | IP Logged |
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I even recall an article from a year or two ago mentioning that Nigeria is introducing French in some regions
(notably, the capital, I believe) because of how important the language is in West Africa. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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