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The development of French in Africa | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 81 of 135 14 November 2011 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Awesome post, s_allard. One can tell you know your stuff. Thanks!
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 82 of 135 14 November 2011 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
You've made some interesting points here. However, I've read that Dioula and Bambara only have about 4 million native speakers each. In a country like Côte d'Ivoire, with 25 million inhabitants, this doesn't comprehend a lot of the population either. But this is all in all, plus another 4 million if one counts bambara, a similar language. This gives us 8 million native speakers in this country. How many native speakers of French are there? In Côte d'_Ivoire and the world? And what about the people who have entirely adopted French as a maternal language or the residents that are of French ancestry? But this is all just politics, I'm more concerned with what is ACTUALLY happening, rather than what should happen.. Although you made an impressing statement. So I guess I would ask you if you think French will diminish in Africa or not? Since I'm learning it, I'm curious ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5430 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 83 of 135 14 November 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would not dare to make any prediction. What I have highlighted is that there are forces in the two directions indicated. I do think that more and more resources will be put into the teaching of standard French because it is a subject of great concern to all governments concerned, including France and Quebec. So, I don't think French will diminish in any near future. If you are learning French in or for going to Africa, the one thing to keep in mind is the tremendous range of variation between the very standard variety spoken by the elite and the French expat population and the many varieties of street French spoken by the masses. In terms of the future direction of French, the development of indigenous French is something to watch. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ReQuest Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5032 days ago 200 posts - 228 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Spanish | Message 84 of 135 14 November 2011 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Swahilli was also brought in use by the Germans, so it wasn't a totally natural development.
(source: das Weltreich der Deutschen ,.you can find the episodes on youtube, the 2nd ep. is about Deutsch-Ostafrika) Edited by ReQuest on 14 November 2011 at 10:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 85 of 135 14 November 2011 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 14 November 2011 at 10:47pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 86 of 135 14 November 2011 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wrote the last post, and this one, from my IPhone while in Turkey, and cannot edit it. But the part in the
previous post starting from " We most certainly do... Is mine. Sorry for the mix up and the double posting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 87 of 135 14 November 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
However, it's a love/relationship of course, as it would with a culture that similar to your own. However, we do not have any distinct linguistic/ regional differences on our own, and no separatist movement. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| nordantill Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 6824 days ago 16 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, French | Message 88 of 135 15 November 2011 at 12:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have written quite extensively on the use of French in Africa before on this forum, and I must say that it's a bit disappointing to see the same old arguments being repeated over and over again : "French is in decline in Africa", "Africans aren't real French speakers", etc. All of these statements are clearly incorrect which anyone who bothers to look at the facts will soon realize. I won't let this post be too long, but let me highlight some of the things I've written on other threads pertaining to this topic, (The posts can be found here,here and here.)
The following is an excerpt from a discussion with s_allard: "Let's start with the demographic aspect, you write "In fact, the commonly used figure of 115 million French speakers in Africa is, in my opinion, misleading. In all the black African countries, French is the first language of less than 5% of the population. In French, the distinction is often made between "francophones" and "francisants", the latter being those for whom French is a second or foreign language. French may be the official language for 115 million people but very few of these are francophones. ". But I believe you get the numbers wrong here, take a look at this report from Population Reference Bureau on the world's population. The total number of people living in Francophone countries in Africa amounts to 335 million people ( 257 million of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa while the remaining 77.3 million reside in Maghreb). 115 million is roughly one third of this number and I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be the case. If we look at the statistics we find that on average somewhere between 40-70% claim to speak French in these countries. Why would this be implausible? As a comparison 65% of all Kenyans claim to speak English, so the number of French speakers in each given country seems to be well within a normal range by African standards. Another thing worth considering is the fact that the French were hellbent on promoting their language in their colonies whilst the British took a more pragmatic position and relied on indigenous languages (something that actually helped spreading and standardizing Swahili in the case East Africa). This actually means that the percentage of French speakers in Francophone countries is usually higher than corresponding numbers for English in anglophone countries. This passage is spot on but yet misses an important aspect: "I think it's very interesting to see the development of indigenous lingua francas within all the African countries. In Senegal, for example, the unofficial national language is wolof as is Bambara in Mali and Kreyol in Liberia and Krio in Sierra Leone." Now, anyone concerned with the fate of Africa should be delighted about this development, but I think you miss an important point. These language do of course serve as lingua francas, but only in confined areas. Wolof is spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and to a lesser extent Mauritania. Bambara , and the closely related dialect Jula are spoken in Mali and Burkina Faso and serve as lingua franca in these two countries. The biggest lingua franca in West Africa is undoubtedly Hausa spoken as a native language in northern Nigeria and in Niger and also used as a trade language in Benin, parts of Burkina Faso, parts of Cameroon and northern Ghana. Altogether there are around 40 million speakers. There are also some other languages in the region that are quite widely used for these purposes (Sango, Yoruba, Fang, Fulani etc). As I said, the increased use of these languages is certainly a good thing and a healthy development (even though the rise of Swahili in East Africa seems to be more rapid and go much deeper). But the fact still remains that these languages are all rather in limited geographically compared to French. Perhaps we need a reminder of how big the Francophone area really is? The Francophone countries in Africa cover a gigantic area going from Algeria in the north to Congo-Kinshasa in the south and from Senegal in the West to Chad in the east. Even if most people don't realize it, this constitutes one the biggest coherent language blocks in the world (bigger than the United states in size). And I will repeat this again: French is the only language connecting all theses places. West Africa is now undergoing swift demographic change where migration is a rather common, in fact the wave of migration within the region is at least seven times higher than migration from the region to Europe. Historically there were similar trends between 1960-1990 when about 30 million West Africans changed their country of residence. It's worth remembering that the growth of migration in West Africa is higher than in the rest of the continent. French plays and obvious role in this process, this report rom The Global Commission on International Migration on Migration in West Africa gives a good description of this: "The communality of language in the francophone zone tends to facilitate networks and communication across boundaries especially because a large part of trade across borders consists of informal and clandestine transactions". (page 10 in the report quoted above). As we can see this development comes from below and is not orchestrated from regional governments or France itself." (It is worth pointing out that S_allard´s response to this was"These figures are essentially correct"). As a follow up, I'd like to quote another of my posts : "In Gabon more than 80% of the population speak French and in the capital Libreville more than 30% of the population speak it as a native language. A passage from the article just quoted "De plus, le français est également devenu la langue maternelle de plus de 30 % des Librevillois et il est de plus en plus perçu comme une langue gabonaise. Le nombre de jeunes ayant pour langue maternelle le français progresse dans les capitales provinciales et départementales, alors que dans les villages le français garde encore le statut de langue véhiculaire". In Abidjan, the biggest city in Cote d'ivoire, French is spoken by as much as 99% of the population"......"In Cameroon French has undergone the same process of assimilation as in Gabon as this report points out "Comparative studies of French usage twenty years ago and in 2004 show a loss of the LWDs, which goes along with a loss of Cameroonian languages in urban areas. Bitjaa Kody has further found that the national languages are disappearing even in endogamic households where family members speak the same national language. Francophone adults used French in 42 percent of the domestic communications which were studied, whereas the young (10–17 years old) used French in 70 percent of the communication. In addition 32 percent of the young between ten and seventeen years old interviewed in Yaounde did not know any national language and had French as their L1 (Bitjaa Kody 2001a). There is a clear change in language use from the parent generation to the generation of their children......Studies of language use in Cameroon show that French is gaining ground in urban areas, since there is a lack of inter-generational transmission via national languages (Bitjaa Kody 2001a; 2001b; 2005). Accordingly, an accelerating urbanisation rate may affect the linguistic situation in Cameroon, as the role and use of Cameroonian French will be expanding" (quoted from page 43 and 46 in the report mentioned above). Bitjaa Kody's report showing the same result is available here. One can clearly see how this came about since a survey conducted in 1977/78 showed that 87% of all children in the Francophone provinces in Cameroon could speak French. In Cote D'Ivoire the same thing's happening, it's estimated that maybe a fourth of the population are native French speakers. And many researchers point out that there's a "nativization" of the French language going on in the country"...."The number of African students studying in French grew by a massive 31,5%." (In addition to what I wrote in this post I'd like to add that in Douala, the commercial capital as well as the biggest city in Cameroon, it's estimated that 99% of the population speak French). Considering the facts outlined above, I find it incredible how you could possibly argue that French is in decline in Africa, or that someone "would not dare to make any prediction" regarding its future in the region. Let' me just briefly summarize all of this: French is spoken by at least 120 million Africans. Furthermore, this number is steadily increasing. In addition, French is making inroads to non-francophone countries in west and central Africa: Guinea-Bissau, Cap Verde, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana and even Nigeria (see this post of mine for more examples and extensive documentation). As I have also pointed out above, French is rapidly becoming a native language for a number of Africans in several different countries (I've failed to detect any similar development in anglophone countries in Africa, so perhaps we should have a thread about "the decline of English in Africa"?). Also, with literacy rates and schooling growing, the number of second language speakers is increasing. The French speaking countries in Africa form a a gigantic geographic area, stretching from Lubumbashi in the south to Algiers in the north and from Conakry in the West to N'Djamena in the east. Within this region (in total bigger than the U.S.) French serves as the only common language. This has, again outlined above, facilitated migration and trade in the region. All the other indigenous languages, Manidinke, Bambara, Jula, Wolof, Hausa etc are obviously widely spoken and used as lingua francas, but only within their own regions. Whenever you leave this area, for example Congolese living in Cote D'Ivoire, Senegalese in Gabon, Malians in Cameroon etc, French becomes indispensable as a language of communication (In fact the main reason for Nigeria and other non-francophone countries in West Africa to emphasize the teaching of French is the predominant role that the language plays in West and central African integration). And, it worth noting that this development has taken place mainly, but not entirely, because of regional factors. So, again I'd like to say that I find this whole discussion quite absurd. Instead of talking about the if French will survive in Africa, we should be talking about why it has been growing and increased its presence there (and correspondingly why a similar process has not happened in anglophone Africa). And instead of just talking about a possible future creolization of the language, we ought to be discussing how French is currently being the used to connect many of the places that make up Francophone Africa. But I guess it might be too much to hope for. After all, it has almost become a truism on this forum that French is withering away in Africa, threads like this one are written without any one paying attention to the real facts. Instead people are going on about how "another domino has fallen" despite the fact that the situation is completely different (Madagascar temporarily added English as an official language together with French and Malagasy in 2009 but dropped it again in 2010, meanwhile nothing changed on the island and French continues serve as the official language together with Malagasy). Or why not the question that S_allard asked a few pages ago;"Can one say that RDC has a larger francophone population than France and that the capital Kinshasa is the second largest French-speaking city in the world and not Montreal?" Well yes, that is if one bothers to look at the statistics readily available; Kinshasa has roughly 10 million inhabitants and 92% of them speak French. But again no one seems to take notice and instead we have silly arguments how Arabic will replace French in Code D'Ivoire(!). Haldor asked a question about the role of French in Africa: "that's really what I was curious about: in which direction the development is headed. How do you know?" I hope this post has at least given some answers to that question. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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