Midterm-languages Flashcards
Material culture
Physical, visible elements
What is culture?
A way of life?
Non-material culture
Invisible intangible
Non gentically predetermined
Non material
T/F not a result of biological inheritance
T
What is one of the central components of culture in Africa?
Language.
How many languages worldwide?
30000
How many languages are African?
1/3
An African language has how many speakers?
About 200,000 speakers
T/F African countries have standard/official languages
True
Anglophone - Liberia, South Africa are
Some classifications that countries are under English
Francophone - Togo, Gabon speak what?
French
Lusophone - Angola, Mozambique speak what?
Portuguese
Monolingual countries speak how many languages?
1 e.g. Arabic, North Africa, except Algeria.
Bilingual countries?
Cameroon and South Africa
Which countries are multilingual?
Senegal and Nigeria
Apart from Arabic, which is the most widespread spoken language? How many speakers roughly?
Swahili and Hausa, each with more than 30 million speakers
African Languages belong to different what?
Different language families - specifically 6 different ones
How many African language families are there?
6
What is the most important language in the Afro-Asiatic group?
Arabic
Afro-Asiatic or Hamito- semantic is one language family - this is the most important language in North Africa. Includes languages spoken in Asia (Middle East) and North Africa
Study this
Amharric, in the Afro- Asiatic family, is the official language of what?
Ethiopia
Other Semitic languages include
Tigre in Eritrea, Berber language in Northwest Africa, and Somali in Samalia
Nilo - Saharan Languages: spoken along parts of the Nile in; Chad, Uganda, Western Sudan, Western Kenya
Second language family
Khoisan: smallest language family in Africa.
- Has no more than 100,000 speakers altogether.
- mostly spoken by the Khoikhoi and the San of South Eastern Africa.
- the languages in this group are also sometimes called the “click” languages.
(4) Niger-Congo - kordofanian
This language family is made up of two subfamilies; Niger-Congo and Kardofanian.
-the Kordofanian subfamily is made up of 30 languages - all of them found in the Nubia Hills of Southern Sudan.
Which subfamily language covers almost of Africa? Below the Sahara desert.
Niger-Congo
3 of 4 speakers belong.
-has several branches:
Central-Southern Africa. Examples- Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Swazi, Bemba, kikuyu, Swahili. A branch
B branch
West sudanic languages in the Niger Delta.
C - Kwa Branch: Akan in the west Africa.
D West Atlantic branch
Ask Em for clarity
5th language?
Malaya-Polynesian family
E.g. Malagasy in Madagascar
6th language?
Indo-European family:
Has 2 members:
English and Afrikaans.
They are indigenous to groups in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Liberia
To simplify communication, some nations have adopted national and regional languages such as:
A-Hausa in parts of West Africa
B- Swahili or Kiswahili in East Africa.
National and regional languages
A Bantu language that belongs to the Niger-Congo language family?
Swahili
Swahili serves as a national or official language in at least how many nations? Which ones?
4 - Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the Comerous,
1 - Through more than 12 centuries of contact between Arabic speakers and coastal East African communities,
2- due to contact with European and other societies over the past 5 centuries, some Swahili words are derived from:
Arabic Persian Portuguese German English French
