African American Vocab Words Flashcards
Savannah
A grassy plain in tropical and subtropical regions, with few trees.
Plateau
An area of relatively level high ground.
Sahara Desert
The largest hot desert in the world, and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic.
Bantu
Relating to or denoting a group of Niger–Congo languages spoken in central and southern Africa, including Swahili, Xhosa, and Zulu.
Swahili
A Bantu language widely used as a lingua franca in East Africa and having official status in several countries.
Subsistence Farming
Self-sufficiency farming in which the farmers focus on growing enough food to feed themselves and their families.
Mansa Musa
An emperor (mansa) of the Mali Empire during the 14th century.
Ghana
Warrior king
Mali
A country of western Africa.
Zimbabwe
A contracted form of dzimba-hwe which means “venerated houses” in the Zezuru dialect of Shona
Timbuktu
A historical and still-inhabited city in the West African nation of Mali
Mohammed
“The Most Praised One”. It is the name of the Islamic prophet.
Askin
Eye dialect spelling of asking.
Sonni Ali
The first king of the Songhai Empire, located in Africa and the 15th ruler of the Sonni dynasty.
Matrilineal
Of or based on kinship with the mother or the female line.
Oral traditions
Information passed down through the generations by word of mouth that is not written down.
Gold and Salt trade
Camel caravans from North Africa carried bars of salt as well as cloth, tobacco, and metal tools across the Sahara to trading centers like Djenne and Timbuktu on the Niger River.
Trans-Saharan
Requires travel across the Sahara (north and south) to reach sub-Saharan Africa from the North African coast, Europe, to the Levant.
Sub-Saharan
From or forming part of the African regions south of the Sahara desert.
Songhai
A member of a people living mainly in Niger and Mali.
Griot
A member of a class of traveling poets, musicians, and storytellers who maintain a tradition of oral history in parts of West Africa.
Diviner
Of, from, or like God or a god.
Lineage
Lineal descent from an ancestor; ancestry or pedigree.
Ibn Batuta
A Moroccan Muslim scholar and traveler.
Indian Ocean
It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, and on the south by the Southern Ocean or, depending on definition, by Antarctica.
Sahel
A semiarid band of land stretching across northern Africa at roughly the 13th parallel, dividing the Sahara desert from Africa’s tropical forests.
