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French vs Swahili usefulness in Africa? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 6803 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 33 11 July 2007 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
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If someone wanted to travel widely in Africa, would French be more useful than Swahili?
I also wondered if Swahili carried any negative stigma left over from slavery, and might offend some native Africans. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6740 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 2 of 33 11 July 2007 at 9:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Depends. The Swahili speaking countries were never French colonies (rather German and English ones). So speaking French would be pretty much useless there, I think.
Furthermore, many countries with French as an important lingua franca (former French colonies) are places where I wouldn't want to go (Chad, Niger, ...). Although Cameroon might be ok. All in all, I would say that the answer to this question depends on the traveler's personal preferences. Tanzania is probably a better playce to go for travel than most French speaking African countries. Edited by Zorndyke on 11 July 2007 at 9:46am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6447 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 3 of 33 11 July 2007 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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You forget a lot of francophone countries. Here's the list from Wikipedia:
* Benin (official language) * Burkina Faso (official language) * Burundi (official language, with Kirundi) * Cameroon (official language, with English) * Cape Verde * Central African Republic (official language, with Sango) * Chad (official language, with Arabic) * Comoros (official language, with Shikomor and Arabic) * Democratic Republic of the Congo (official language) * Republic of the Congo (official language) * Côte d'Ivoire (official language) * Djibouti (official language, with Arabic) * Egypt * Equatorial Guinea * Gabon (official language) * Guinea (official language) * Guinea-Bissau * Madagascar (French is de-facto official) * Mali (official language) * Mauritania (French is commonly used) * Mauritius (official language) * Morocco (French is commonly used) * Niger (official language) * Rwanda (official language, with Kinyarwanda and English) * São Tomé and Príncipe * Senegal (official language) * Seychelles (official language, with English and Creole) * Togo (official language) * Tunisia (French is commonly used) How many people actually speak French depends on the country, in many places like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Ivory Coast or Senegal there are a lot, for the others I don't know. Swahili is pretty much restricted to Kenya and Tanzania (and the border regions of their neighbours), two countries were you shouldn't have many problems getting by with English, so you don't gain much by learning Swahili. However, in French-speaking your English won't get you far, so I'd say that French is far more useful for travelling Africa. Edited by Marc Frisch on 11 July 2007 at 10:30am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6740 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 4 of 33 11 July 2007 at 10:39am | IP Logged | ||
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I consciously left out the French speaking countries of North Africa.
While they're in Africa, geographically speaking, culturally they're rather not that African. And I wouldn't want to go there that much either, no matter whether they're now truly African or not. There are also several countries in your list with rather few French speakers. Others are, as I said rather dangerous places. Or do you want to visit Rwanda? However, I also said it's a question of preferences and I hear there is some tourism even in those countries again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6229 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 33 11 July 2007 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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French, hands down, to travel widely, learn about the continent, its languages and read a variety of authors, including the ones writing in Swahili. Better than English in many ways and that's saying a lot.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 33 11 July 2007 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm a little surprised to see Cape Verde categorized as a French speaking country. I admit that I did speak French to one person there (who had spent many years in France), but otherwise people there speak either ordinary European Portuguese or a Portuguese Creole (among themselves).
Apart from that I agree with the argument of Marc Frisch: there are places where you haven't got an easy alternative to French, while you can speak English everywhere where Swahili is spoken. However if I had a longer stay in East Africa I would probably have a look at Swahili too, - I have read an old "Teach yourself Swahili", and it seems to be an interesting and - at least in the beginning - not too difficult language. Edited by Iversen on 13 July 2007 at 5:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| HTale Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6160 days ago 164 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French | Message 7 of 33 13 July 2007 at 10:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I find it saddening to see so many countries washed with French; Africa has lost its identity in many respects as a result. Before I'm branded a xenophobe, or 'francophobe' (haha, if such term exists), I find French a beautiful language, however, so many African languages are dying out because of its domination there.
I'm off on a tagent again. In short, as you can probably guess from above, French will prove extremely useful. Personally, if I had the time, and if I were in similar circumstances, I'd choose to learn both. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6351 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 8 of 33 13 July 2007 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Hmmm, what does "truly African" mean? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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