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Swahili to be introduced in South Sudan | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 1 of 8 02 September 2011 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I found this interesting. In a move to align itself with East Africa and distance itself from Sudan, the newly independent nation of South Sudan apparently is going to ditch Arabic and introduce Swahili. Is it just the regional re-alignment of a single country, or a deeper sign that Swahili is becoming more important as a regional lingua franca? What are your thoughts?
http://www.coastweek.com/kenxin_110805_04.htm
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| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 2 of 8 03 September 2011 at 5:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, it's an important regional lingua franca for 100 million of the world's poorest people. Take that as you will...
Anyway, Arabic was never particularly present in southern Sudan to begin with. It'd kind of be like Quebec seceding from the rest of Canada and eschewing English in favor of French (with the difference being that Quebec is already united by the French language, whereas Swahili doesn't have that much of a presence in South Sudan). Anyway, South Sudan's sole official language is currently English. English is undeniably a more useful language than Swahili on a global scale, but it'll be interesting to see if South Sudanese tilt toward Swahili due to its greater utility at the regional local level. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jhois777 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4964 days ago 43 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 3 of 8 03 September 2011 at 5:33am | IP Logged | ||
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It would be nice if Swahili took over Africa, but I don't think it will happen. South
Sudan want to get away from Arabic because of the political implications. Which I think is fair enough. But, yeah Swahili remains an important language and this will make it a little bit stronger. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 8 03 September 2011 at 5:47am | IP Logged | ||
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It has an obvious political motivation with the language having been imbued with a sense of "Pan-Africanness" over the years. However I could also understand why the government wouldn't have picked a local language such as Nuer or Dinka, considering that there are about 60 languages spoken in the country and I could see that someone there interpreting the choice of one of these languages as favourtism of those native speakers over speakers of the other 59 languages.
I wonder whether English will remain the official language, become co-official with Swahili or be supplanted by Swahili. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6263 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 8 03 September 2011 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes! great move! Even though I don't study the language, and actually study Arabic, I am really happy to see this indigenous African language gaining an ever bigger importance, which it deserves. It's a courageous move, and very important for Africa as a whole.
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| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6263 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 8 03 September 2011 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also found this article, very interesting:
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Swah ili&month=1101&week=b&msg=h3bOP81Y3vjSU9meU4jeUw 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4611 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 7 of 8 28 June 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I asked some South Sudanese friends about this in January 2012 and they denied it, saying
there are no plans to do any such thing. They are not in government, but are very well connected. They did tell me that it has been a challenge in some areas adapting to a new lingua franca (previously Arabic, now English) and the older generation who were educated in Arabic are finding themselves excluded from employment. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5084 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 8 of 8 30 June 2012 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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As much as I like seeing Swahili promoted... it doesn't really matter whether it's
Swahili, English, or Arabic. None of them are indigenous to Southern Sudan. None of them are a replacement for the promotion and development of indigenous vernaculars. There's no problem with using a foreign language as a lingua franca but imposing it as the national language is overdoing it. It's forgetting the value of your own languages. Why isn't there space for South Sudanese languages with millions (Dinka) or hundreds of thousands (Bari, Zande) of speakers in the educational or media systems? 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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