French vs Swahili usefulness in Africa? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

French vs Swahili usefulness in Africa?
Tags: Africa \| Swahili \| Usefulness \| French
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Karakorum
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Message 25 of 33

15 July 2007 at 12:37pm | IP Logged

Zorndyke wrote:

reineke wrote:

Pinpoiting dangerous areas in the French speaking world in favor of a comparatively small area where Swahili is dominant is a weak argument. Why not also mention some safe, interesting French-speaking countries?

I have aready explained why I don't think that this small area is so unimportant. I think those few Swahili speaking countries are better than 10 of the French speaking countries in Africa.
And I have mentioned safe French speaking countries.

Then why did you start this thread if you've already made up your mind? Learn Swahili then!

Zorndyke wrote:

Karakorum wrote:

Yup, the comparison is invalid. Arabic in North Africa is rather like Turkish in Asia Minor or Romance languages in Western Europe.

Wikipedia says the non-Arabic languages in North Africa are all minority languages there. Have you other information?

What are you talking about? Did you even read what I wrote?

Zorndyke wrote:

Karakorum wrote:

As to French speaking countries, my father visited Senegal a few years ago. He says it's a great country, beautiful people, and an interesting culture. As far as safety, during the same year he'd also been to Nairobi, Harare, Durban, Capetown, and Johannesburg. Dakar was safer than any of them. I guess the Ivory Coast is also OK if you stay more or less around Abidjan, I haven't heard anything terrible about Ghana, and Cameroon has been stable for as long as I remember.

A friend of mine also was in Senegal. He was shot. I don't even want to talk about the Ivory Coast.
I suppose your father looks like an African or Arab?

I am sorry your friend was shot, but I guess the chance remains that you will be shot at in Nairobi, or Berlin, or (and this is very real) where I live in Socal. Again what does "look like an African" mean? There is no African look dude. If you mean does he look Black, the answer is no, and people in most African countries don't actually care. They are over it. In fact people in Senegal went out of their way to be nice to him, because they felt a sort of religious and cultural kinship to him. I get that you have anti-Arab, anti-Muslim biases, and honestly I have seen this way too often to even care. I just thought you made an honest mistake with ascribing non-nativity to us and wanted to ask you to be more civil. Also I guess I kinda got used to threads on this forum being started by people who had serious questions, the answers to which they didn't know; not rhetoricals designed as starting points for racial/political one liners. In any case, I hope you have a nice trip through the Swahili coast, and I hope the people there help you see how tolerant, diverse, and multi-layered sub-Saharan Africa is. Good luck.
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reineke
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Message 26 of 33

15 July 2007 at 2:22pm | IP Logged

orion started the thread which at this point is turning kinda silly.
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Karakorum
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Message 27 of 33

15 July 2007 at 2:29pm | IP Logged

reineke wrote:

orion started the thread which at this point is turning kinda silly.

Didn't notice that. And I agree, it's turning silly and totally unrelated to language.
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Zorndyke
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Message 28 of 33

15 July 2007 at 2:37pm | IP Logged

Karakorum wrote:

Then why did you start this thread if you've already made up your mind? Learn Swahili then!

This makes me laugh. Really.

In the first sentence you claim I started this thread (wrong! - orion started this thread!) and in the other sentence you accuse me of not even reading what you write.

Ah... and by the way, I just saw it on TV: German authorities say the French speaking North African/ Sahel countries are among the most dangerous countries for westerners. The only places more dangerous are Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Chechenya, they say.

Quote:

Again what does "look like an African" mean? There is no African look dude.

You know exactly what I mean.

Quote:

What are you talking about? Did you even read what I wrote?

I thought you mentioned Turkish because it makes up just a small part of the languages in the Middle East and the Romance languages because they just make up one part of Western Europe. And so the Berber languages make up just a small part of the languages spoken in North Africa today. Just now it comes to my mind that you probably used these two examples, because in a certain way these languages are not "native" to the area they're spoken nowadays.
But obviously you don't care about a discussion (any more?) anyway.

EDIT:
Yes, and for all I care, we can stop this "discussion" now.

Edited by Zorndyke on 15 July 2007 at 2:42pm
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Karakorum
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Message 29 of 33

15 July 2007 at 3:20pm | IP Logged

Zorndyke wrote:

Quote:

Again what does "look like an African" mean? There is no African look dude.

You know exactly what I mean.

I honestly don't! If you want to continue discussing this, maybe we can take it to PM's. It's not so much that I want to stop talking about it, it's that this board is not the place to discuss it.
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lloydkirk
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Message 30 of 33

15 July 2007 at 5:56pm | IP Logged

The debate seems to be whether the Arabic language/culture and Islam can be considered African. Many westerners don't seem to think so..Today, the answer is technically yes, but prior to the 7th century AD this was not the case. In Egypt, coptic was spoken and they had their own religion. Berber languages were spoken throughout northern africa. The Islamic religion and arabic culture/language was forced upon the indigenous peoples. Even today, this is occurring in sudan and nigeria.
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leosmith
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Message 31 of 33

15 July 2007 at 8:35pm | IP Logged

Zorndyke wrote:

leosmith wrote:

Another thing to keep in mind is nearly half of all Swahili speakers are Moslems. So there's a lot of cultural overlap.

Yeah, on the paper is says they're Muslims.

Bwana Zorndyke, I thought you lived in Tanzania? Sorry - maybe I got you mixed up with another member. If the "paper" is wrong, then I can only speak for Tanzania where I lived. There's a huge Moslem influence there (I think over 40% of the population). Everything from architecture, dress codes, call to prayer, no pork available, limited use of the left hand, Arabic phrases being spoken frequently, etc. Did you know that by far the most loan words in Swahili come from Arabic, for example? Fascinating culture really.
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Zorndyke
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Message 32 of 33

16 July 2007 at 6:42am | IP Logged

Quote:

Well, I think I can hardly answer this without starting a new discussion which is out of place here.
However, I am aware of what you say about the islamic influences there. To return to languages: I have already seen for example the influence of Arabic becomes very obvious when it comes to numbers or loanwords as "kitabu" as well as the country's capital, Daressalam.
I think the member who lived in Tanzania for some time was Nyerere, btw.

Edited by Zorndyke on 16 July 2007 at 6:43am

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