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French is important in Africa | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5340 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 9 of 21 27 April 2010 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Please correct me if I am wrong, from what I understand, French is a widely spoken language in Maghreb countries apart from Arabic, but ironically, France imposes language requirement/restrictions on Algerians wanting to study in French universities, ie. Algerians are required to pass DELF B2 to be admitted. My question is: isn't French part of the language instruction in the Algerian education system? Because from the few Algerians whom I met so far, they could all speak French very fluently!
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 21 27 April 2010 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Filipinos use English in their educational system, yet any English university will still require an English proficiency
test, since they're not native speakers. (And many of the Filipinos I know would probably fail an English proficiency test.) 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 11 of 21 28 April 2010 at 3:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much for your kind respones, I really appreciate it. Some of you have asked me to write more about the use of French in the Maghreb countries and Egypt. Since I am very busy these days I probably won't get around to it until Friday or so (writing this kind of post takes quite some time). But I promise to post it as soon as possible. Edited by nordantill on 28 April 2010 at 5:58am 2 persons have 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 12 of 21 29 April 2010 at 6:17am | IP Logged | ||
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A great post. I can well appreciate the time it took to write all that text. I would like to add that, although French is the official language of many countries as stated, one could argue that French is the first or native language of only very small minorities in these countries.
I bring this up for two reasons, and it is in no way to criticize the original post. Firstly, 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. Despite its official status, French is still a second language for most Africans and a language with a colonial past. Secondly, I think we can assume that there is the emergence of a distinctive African variety of French for that very same reason of second language status. We know that the much-maligned "français tirailleur", a simplified French used for African recruits in the French army of WWI, has certainly influenced the more popular forms of French as used by the uneducated masses. It would be interesting to see if some sort of French-based pidgin and ultimately a creole develops in the very long term. Edit: As some readers will have noted, I like to quibble. The proponents of the concept of "francophonie" with its neocolonial reminiscences have always highlighted the large number of African French-speakers. This increases the number of French speakers in the world considerably. 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. This is a rather unique situation which reflects the colonial history of the continent. Unfortunately, the dominant preoccupation with 'la francophonie" has obscured the reality of benign neglect of the indigenous languages that have had to thrive with little or no assistance from the state. Edited by s_allard on 29 April 2010 at 7:04am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5904 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 13 of 21 29 April 2010 at 12:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Hear hear, I do agree with this! It's mostly educated, upper/middle class, folk who speak French as a first language in Western Africa, mostly it's used in education etc. as a second language when the native Lingua France fails. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tally Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Israel Joined 5608 days ago 135 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew* Studies: French | Message 14 of 21 29 April 2010 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Great post!
I've always wanted to visit Africa, and I've always wanted to study French.This was very interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| original501 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5639 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Portuguese Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 15 of 21 29 April 2010 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually, Spanish is also spoken in northern Morocco.
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| nordantill Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 6824 days ago 16 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Mandarin Studies: Spanish, French | Message 16 of 21 30 April 2010 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much for your interesting post s allard, you bring up some pertinent questions. Here's my response to them.
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 from 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. When you write that " In all the black African countries, French is the first language of less than 5% of the population" I get the feeling that this wouldn't make this part of the world genuinely Francophone. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted what you actually meant but this kind of argument is often brought up as an evidence that Africa isn't really Francophone. The obvious question is why this would be the case? It's true that most Africans who speak French are second language speakers, although the number of first language speakers is rising especially in Cameroon, Cote d'ivoire, Gabon. But the same is true in basically every former colony in the world. In India less than a quarter of a million people are native English speakers. Would this disqualify India from being a part of the English-speaking world? I think few people would be willing to argue that. And this is of course based on the fact that English is used as a second language throughout the country. India is the third biggest English book producing country (only trailing the U.S. and the U.K), several of India's major newspapers are published in English and higher education is almost exclusively carried out in the language etc. All this naturally makes India a part of the Anglophone sphere. But this should logically also apply to Francophone Africa to Vis-à-vis the French-speaking world. In fact, one could even take this analogy further by comparing the actual numbers of second language speakers in these two regions. By most estimates about 4% of all Indians can speak English (I know that it's sometimes estimated as much higher but there are several reasons to be suspicious of these numbers). Even if we accept the higher numbers of English speakers in India as true the percentage (15-30%) is still lower than those of French in virtually all Francophone countries in Africa. As a matter of fact, considering the numbers I quoted above it seems plausible that the total number of French speakers in Africa is higher the the number of people who speak English in India. But just like English in India has it's own characteristics, so does French in Africa. You write " Secondly, I think we can assume that there is the emergence of a distinctive African variety of French for that very same reason of second language status. We know that the much-maligned "français tirailleur", a simplified French used for African recruits in the French army of WWI, has certainly influenced the more popular forms of French as used by the uneducated masses. It would be interesting to see if some sort of French-based pidgin and ultimately a creole develops in the very long term. ". This is certainly true. I recently read an interesting article (which I am unfortunately unable to locate right now) describing the emergence of new specific words in Francophone Africa. One of these was the verb "Giraffe" which would mean sitting behind some one in the classroom and cheat by peaking at what he is writing. I am sorry that I can't find the article right now as it was quite interesting. I suppose the question is how fare this transformation of the language will go. Indian English have many unique expressions but is yet not usually thought of as a creole despite this. The same thing applies to other forms of English in Africa,African Portuguese, differences between Portuguese in Portugal and Brazil etc. I guess only time will tell if there will be further changes in the language and how big they will be. The increase of schooling and literacy together with contacts with the rest of French-speaking world will probably also have a mitigating effect in this respect. The final part I'd like to comment is this: "French is still a second language for most Africans and a language with a colonial past". This is absolutely true, but this question is not entirely black and white (no pun intended). I think we find the same problem all over the the former colonial world. English, French,Spanish Portuguese, Afrikaans etc, were all brought there by brute force. The humiliation of getting conquered, enslaved and finally being forced to learn the language of this new ruler is probably impossible to understand for most of us. But when we look the former colonies in Asia and especially Africa we find that the language of the former colonizers is still there. Why? The simple, and somewhat shallow, answer is that the new ruling elite is still attached to these languages. This is partly true, most of the anti-colonial movements consisted of people who had received their education in Europe and often spoke these languages better the the indigenous ones. This was the case of MPLA in Angola, The congress party in India, Bloc Populaire Sénégalais and so on. After independence they would keep their former colonial languages as a unifying force and also benefit from the fact these languages would be "neutral" and not favor any particular ethnic group. (Interestingly, there's one quite consistent pattern: the countries that did manage to abolish their former colonial languages were all almost completely monolingual; Vietnam, Somalia, Kuwait etc, whilst multilingual countries would be forced to keep the former colonial language, The only major exception to this rule is Indonesia). This is one part of the explanation, but another and more subtle explanation is the fact English,French, Portuguese etc were all slowly conquered by the colonized people (figuratively of course). As people from the former colonies started using these languages for literary, artistic and cultural purposes they did this in ways which were new and radically different compared to a European context. Ahmadou Kourouma illustrates this in the case of French. When he wrote his book Les soleils des indépendances (The Suns of Independence) publishers in France refused to have it published since it wasn't written in "correct" French. Instead Kourouma had chosen to write in a more colloquial French based on a how people on the street would speak the language. The book was eventually picked up by a Canadian publisher and became a big success and hugely influential in Francophone Africa where it's still read in many school. But more interesting was how it changed the perception of the French language as that of the oppressor, the Ivorian author and literary critic Véronique Tadjo described it as follows "Kourouma's book showed that French wasn't just the language of the former oppressors, that it was also possible to use it to serve our purpose and render our African experience. He demonstrated that the language belonged to us, too, and that we were free to use it how we wanted in order to communicate our reality" What's interesting is that many in France itself seem to be averse to this development, the Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou makes the following observation concerning many French intellectuals attitude to other Francophone authors "or so many years, it has been disdained by the Paris establishment, relegated to small editions...The recent literary prizes awarded to French-speaking writers from other countries are a first step toward recognition, but that's not enough. Francophone literature from outside of France really has to be strong, because it's one of the major ambassadors of the French language. It's no surprise to me that most French texts translated into English have been written by authors who are not from France itself. They have an aperture to the world most Parisian writers don't have. You write that La Francophonie has "neocolonial reminiscences" and I couldn't agree more. France is surely using it to further its own interests.(for some examples of French involvement in African conflicts see here, here and here. British policy has been quite similar , see this, this and this for a starter. I feel that we now are drifting away from the original topic however) To summarize,should we still conclude that French is only a a language with a colonial past? This is surely one part of it but we must also acknowledge that the situation is much more complex than that. Indeed, the African literature written in French, the music sung in French and the movies made in French show that French (just like English in South Africa, Portuguese in Angola) has also become an African language. (This post became muuuuuch longer than I had originally planned, sorry about that , I hope that some of you enjoyed it. I guess the posting about how French is spoken in Maghreb and Egypt will have to wait for a few more days) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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