Talk:Languages of Africa

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To-do list for Languages of Africa: edit  · history  · watch  · refresh

There are about 2035 languages in africa(Batibo, 2003)
Priority 3

Shouldn't this article be called African languages (plural)? Strangeloop (talk) 22:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I concur. - Mustafaa 03:14, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Besides, there are already many pages that are linking to African Languages instead (which is a redirect to African language at present). But now the existence of that page poses a problem if we are going to move this one. And by just plain copy-pasting the text, the history of this page will be gone. Anyone suggestions on how to solve this?

I've sorted it Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 10:35, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wow that was fast! Thanks! - Strangeloop (talk) 10:36, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Map & text

I created a map and added it to the article. I will adjust the text soon; on the map, I divided Niger-Congo in A and B to show the size of the Bantoid branch. - Strangeloop (talk) 12:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I really like the layout of the thematic map (appealing colours, smooth edges). But one thing that's missing is a correct colour shading for those areas where Indo-European language speakers form the majority (i.e. western South Africa, southern Namibia, plus all off-shore islands except Socotra, Djerba, Mayotte, the Comoros, Madagascar, Zanzibar and Pemba). Also, I believe the extent of Khoisan as shown is exaggerated slightly, or refers to the extent of that family several generations ago. Similarly, much of North Africa has gone through language shift and is now primarily Arabic-speaking, although this doesn't affect the colour on the map but perhaps the placement of the language name labels? --Big Adamsky 20:37, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Big Adamsky, because I'm trying to centralize the discussion, I have copied these comments to commons:Image talk:African language families.png and responded there. — mark ✎ 10:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I really like the African languages map, but I find the North African distribution questionable. Total absence of Arabic in the Northwest is misleading. Arabic is not only a second language of the majority, but also the first language of the absolute majority in Tunisia, a clear majority in Algeria and Morocco, and a significant pluraity in Mauritania. As it stands, the map seems to suggest that Arabic is spoken in Egypt and parts of Lybia, while Berber is spoken in the rest of North Africa (which is clearly not the reality). Berber is alive, true, but so is Arabic very clearly.--Karkaron 04:51, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New version

I replaced the article with a major rewrite Mustafaa and I have been working on some time ago. There is still very much that remains to be done. I'll add a to do list here in a minute. — mark ✎ 12:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] African languages itself on Wikimedia project

I'm trying to gather information about the situation of African languages itself on Wikimedia projects. For this I created a page on meta. I'm inviting you to indicate your knowledge about African languages itself, and possibly to help out with collecting some stats and adding links. Thanks, G-u-a-k-@ 12:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Style for African language names

I'd like to start a debate about a WP style for the names of African languages, including capitalisation. Currently WP articles may refer to: Swahili, Kiswahili, kiSwahili, KiSwahili; or Ndebele, Sindebele, isiNdebele and sinDebele; etc. Redirects help, but its very confusing for the casual reader and hopeless for Wiki search.

My own (tentative) feeling is that, when writing in English, we should follow the English capitalisation rules, thus French not français, and German language, not deutsche Sprache: so Sindebele not isiNdebele. The language's own name(s) for itself could then follow in brackets, as with placenames. But I'm sure there will be lots of strong opinion about this... JackyR 00:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, your "tentative feeling" is the same as the already existing wikipedia policy... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 20:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh I do hope so... Can you point me at a specific WP language-name policy page (have so far only found general MoS on loan words)? I brought it up cos if the policy exists it sure ain't being followed... I've been tripping over Tswana/seTswana/Setswana (not to mention baTswana/Batswana, etc) and all the variants on Ndebele, and there seems to have been a minor war over Swahili/Kiswahili (Talk:Swahili_language/archive1). JackyR 02:06, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
It might be in the MoS somewhere -- but that is useful only until some stubborn individual decides to change it to fit her/his own opinion of "what is right". In my experience, the English forms are followed unless specific examples can be shown to be (1) either US- or UK-centric or (2) somehow offensive to the locals. If you are familiar with the material, you probably know where the most serious problems lie.
But instead of worrying that someone will find fault with your work (if they do, it probably won't be due to anything you have done), just use common sense & try to be consistent in your work. And remember the rule of Internet volunteerism: when you do the work, you are allowed to be the boss. -- llywrch 18:33, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
Cheers. You're right, I'm afraid of being being toasted. Most writing about Africa by outsiders is open to the charge of being US- or Euro-centric. If I go through an existing article, changing language names for the benefit of consistency and the uninformed reader, I am certainly European-ising (I'm British) an African English article. This makes me uncomfortable. However, I think we're failing our non-African readership if we don't make references to African languages easy to search, navigate and understand.
My second issue is just that, if we do want a standard style where poss, this is a good time to try to do it, while African WP material still comparatively small. Currently it's scrappy. If you look at List of ISO 639 codes, you'll find, eg "nya: Chichewa, Chewa, Nyanja", (and I've usually heard Chichewa called that, not Chewa) but "sna: Shona" (not chiShona or Chishona). And look at Great Zimbabwe §2: "a Shona (dialect: chiKaranga)" - two styles for the price of one, and yet jolly useful if you understand African language names. Setswana and Tswana are the Botswana and South African English versions of the same language.
To summarise:
  1. Many African languages use prefixes (ki, chi, tshi, se, isi) to make the root name of a culture into the name of a language. Example: Tswana people (called baTswana) speak the Tswana language (seTswana).
  2. The policy described above means WP would say "The Zulu language (also spelled isiZulu or Isizulu) ..."
  3. The policy will lead to articles saying eg, "In the Zulu language, greetings are very important;" or, more likely, "In Zulu, ..." The former is cumbersome, the latter slightly un-natural to speakers of various African Englishes, who may chose to contribute, in the same article, eg, "isiZulu contains click sounds." What is good editorial practice when this happens?
  4. Capitalisation thus: "chiShona", has the advantage of revealing the root more clearly, but the disadvantage of not following English grammar, confusing non-Africans and being difficult for English speakers to read (see Tswana for same prob with ba- prefix). "Chishona'" conceals the root, again confusing non-Africans. Which is better if an editor does use this instead of "Shona"?
  5. There are countries in which the local English usually names the African language with its prefix (eg Setswana, Chichewa). Does WP accept this and vary the policy according to local usage? (And god help us wrt different countries with different names for the same language.)
Does any of this matter? The editor in me likes some sort of consistency, and I do think some articles are currently difficult to understand for non-Africans. But as African Wiki-usage increases, I'm reasonably sure language names will lead to edit wars and vitriolic accusations. I can certainly use my skill and judgement to create what works for me but I'd like people with whom to share the blame - ahem, to help me reach more consensual usage!
PS Have found Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) - but unfortunately it has little helpful. If we reach some consensus here, I'll post there.JackyR 22:03, 17 January 2006 (UTC) (One of life's worriers...)
I don't mean to repeat myself, but as I said above "use common sense & try to be consistent in your work". You appear to know a bit about the subject, so I have trust that your instincts will lead you to the correct result in most cases. (For example, English practice is to use "Zulu" for the ethnic group & "Zulu language" for what they speak. -- which appears to be what you'd like to do.) And if nativc speakers of African languages start flaming you over these choices, try to be accomidating while firmly pointing them to the guidelines about civil behavior on Wikipedia: ignorance is not an excuse for being the target of hostile behavior. -- llywrch 23:24, 17 January 2006 (UTC)


My 2-thebe worth:

Forms like Setswana, Sindebele (capitalised like that) should be favoured except where (eg Zulu) there is an established Eng lang version.

Distinctions between languages and cultures should be maintained. Words like 'Bantu' should NEVER be used as shorthand for a race.

Guinnog 17:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Basically agree with what has been said - use the English versions of the African languages in question. We say German not Deutch, Spanish not Espanhol, Chinese not (whatever it is in Mandarin)... similarly we should say Zulu not what Zulus call themselves... Mikkerpikker ... 03:07, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm somewhat late to the party, but I, too, basically agree with what has been said. Use whatever terms are most common for article names. Expand on the name in the article itself, if needed (at the very least, mention the native name). JackyR, I think it is a good initiative to try to get some consistency in this area.

There is one thing I would like to add: be not too dependent on the Ethnologue (this is especially an issue in this field, as not many people have access to offline sources on African languages). The Ethnologue is a great resource overall, but it shouldn't be treated as a primary source. Thus, to give a recent example, when it says that Ekoti is called Koti —thereby omitting the noun class prefix—, it deviates from most publications on that language (scholarly and otherwise, in English as well as Portuguese), in which it is usually called Ekoti. My position is that we should stick to Ekoti in such a case, because that is the most common term. And on a related issue: these are precisely the cases where the Google test is notoriously irreliable. Searching a good Africanist database usually gives a far better indication. — mark ✎ 21:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

"Established English" names are not so simple. For example, the South African government generally uses prefixed forms in English publications (isiXhosa, siZulu, siNdebele, or possibly IsiXhosa, etc.) Also, established among whom? How many people outside of Africa have heard of tshiVenda? I call it "Venda", but most people who speak about it probably also speak it, or are experts, especially outside Africa and so are more likely to call it tshiVenda. However, I definitely support:

  • Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho (in fact, it was I who moved SeSotho to Sotho language) --대조 | Talk 19:25, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Established usage in English is most certainly "Venda" not "tshiVenda". I'm from SA & I've never even heard of the latter. The question is this: what name do English speakers in the relevant area/country call the language in question? Answer: Venda. Besides, Venda has 5,990,000 Google hits [1] but tshiVenda only 61,500 [2]. The same will be true for any other local language... Mikkerpikker ... 19:33, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Mikkerpikker is bang on: What do English speakers in the area/country call the language.
But generally, Google test not 100% reliable in this field, as majority of web content supplied by Highly Connected Countries which then duplicate each others' contibutions - and biases. Better to look at where usages appear. JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)


Micheal lives in Cape-Town, so it's not too surprising that he's never heard anyone calling it "Tshivenda". It's like an Ethiopian claiming he's never heard anyone calling Mandarin "Putonghua".
-User:ZyXoas 12:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh good, it seems tshi- is the right prefix for Venda. I've never used it myself, but seemed to remember it from somewhere. But I'm afraid that your Putonghua in Ethiopia analogy doesn't work: Michael lives in South Africa. Guess where Venda is spoken? In the not-very-far-away South Africa. I think local should mean something closer to "in the same country" than "in the same town". I maintain that having the article at TshiVenda is the same as having Standard Mandarin at Putonghua. --대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree with JackyR. I have expertise with the English langauge, not with Africa. A useful principle is to make the encyclopedia usable to as many non-experts as possible. The name of the language in that language doesn't help non-speakers, including, by defintion, most Africans.BrainyBabe 20:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

On the capitalisation issue: I don't think the "look like English" works here. I can handle SiNdebele or siNdebele (my preferred) but I think Sindebele looks wrong and is misleading. --대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Capitalisation is utterly retarded and is only useful to people who want morphology to be salient. I don't mean to offend anyone but it makes no sense to use capitals inside words like kiSwahili. If we StartEd to Use CapitalIzation in All wordS to Make MorphoLogy SalIent When Should we Start or End? We DoN't do it in EnglIsh in GenerAl, why should we Start DoIng it for AfricAn languages? ---moyogo 07:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

'Zulu' is by far the more common term in English for the language, and is the Wikipedia standard for now. Languages though are alive, and 'isiZulu' is in the process of being 'stolen' by English, and as is pointed out elsewhere is already quite widely accepted in South African English. Wikipedia though should use the more standard 'Zulu'. The same applies to the other languages. Greenman 23:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please help with survey

So local Englishes should be the guide. I hope that's not controversial - it's the same as US/C'wealth spelling consensus. I've started a very unscientific survey of usage at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. Please help. Particularly, pls give references for usage, so these can be used in the corresponding articles. Cheers, JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Language boxes

Would it help to have a language box in each language-article, giving the root and some prefixes? This would help non-African readers understand and search articles effectively. It would also introduce stability, so that even if the title/text of an article go through edit wars, the terms will all still be searchable. Something like (but better...):

language of se-
place of ba- Tswana
person of mo-
people of bo-

JackyR 16:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. Those kind of prefixes (more commonly known as noun class prefixes) are limited to Bantu languages; while these number about 300-400, in many of them the system is fairly similar so it would be very redundant to include boxes like that in any Bantu article. — mark ✎ 17:06, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
By redundancy, you mean being repeated in lots of articles? Yes, that would happen. In fact, I guess it will happen anyway, since this info would naturally appear in the description of each language. I don't think we can expect articles to limit themselves to, "This language has Bantu language properties, go look that up." Sure, that's cool for a reader researching top down - there's a group out there called bantu languages, this is how they work, here's an example. But I'm thinking of readers coming at this bottom up - look for a specific language, learn about it, maybe follow interesting links to the general family.
So the boxes wouldn't be for linguists, they'd be navigational aids for people trying to read about (say) Zimbabwe. Currently, if you don't know about these specific prefixes, you're well confused trying to fit the picture together, eg reading Great Zimbabwe. JackyR 18:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
I think the boxes are a really good idea actually. They'd help clear up the whole isi- prefix question for non-native speakers or non-locals. I'm off to put one in Zulu :) Al Joziboy

[edit] Is Swahili Really an African Language

Swahili is a creole of English, Arabic, and other languages. As far as I know it isn't anyone's first languange. While it spoken almost exclusively in Africa, it doesn't seem that much more "African" than Enlish, French, or Dutch.

  • Ummm... see Swahili. Also, Afrikaans is most certainly an African language, and yet it is a mixture of Dutch, English, German and others. Mikker (...) 01:14, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Yep, you got that all wrong, it's a bantu family language and is also a first language for tens of thousands, sometimes even their only language; also, lots of African languages have loan words from non African languages, so if being spoken in Africa is not your criterion, what is?? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 01:31, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Swahili has some English loan words from recent colonial influence but was spoken on the coast of East Africa centuries before that as an important trading language. It is a Bantu language that because of its position as a lingua franca has absorbed quite some Arabic vocabulary, just like English in the middle ages has absorbed lots of French. Does that make English a creole? Furthermore, Swahili has hundreds of thousands of native speakers; see here for more details. — mark ✎ 07:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • That was a nice April fool's. ---moyogo 07:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA failed

  • It fails criteria 3. Not broad enough (talk about the history of the languages, the extinctions of them, the remoteness of some others, etc.) because so many aspects haven't been covered. Lincher 23:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Obviously. I'm removing the GAfailed template because the to do list at the top of the page was here all along, so anyone could see that this article still needed lots of work; besides, that list provides much more specific suggestions on how to improve the article. — mark ✎ 06:37, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move Request

It was requested that this article be renamed but the procedure outlined at WP:RM#How to request a page move did not appear to be followed, and consensus could not be determined. Please request a move again with proper procedure if there is still a desire for the page to be moved. Thank you for your time! -- tariqabjotu 03:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article rename

This article was recently renamed from "African languages" to "Language of Africa". The brief discussion regarding the naming of this article (at the top of this page) supported the name "African languages", so I have renamed it accordingly. I do not see the rationale for taking this issue to Wikipedia:Requested moves (per the above suggestion) when it can be adequately discussed here.--Ezeu 18:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I support the move back. Let's leave it at African languages, it is simply the most descriptive and least confusing option. — mark ✎ 07:55, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To-do #5 national languages vs. official languages

I enlivened links for these terms in #5 of Mark's to-do list. The national language article needs some significant revisions, and if anyone works on this issue for this article, maybe they might want to add some copy to that one too. Probably also with official language. There is another category of possible use to this subject for the African languages article, and that is regional language. --A12n 04:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] African languages and Non African languages

I think that we should split an article of Languages of Africa. By Stooppy.

  • I oppose the proposed split. You want to segregate a separate article for "Languages of Africa - non-African languages" ??? I don't think that would be very helpful, and there isn't enough to say about any languages that could possibly meet that description, to warrant a dedicated page, anyway. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 12:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I fail to see the relevancy. --Ezeu 20:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Don't see the need/rational and in fact hard to see why. Proposer should please explain. TIA. --A12n 23:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Personal Opinions about problems with this article

In my opinion this article does not give a very good overview of African languages. The text provides very little information except that there are four or five classes of language. The maps are far more informative than the text, and yet insufficient. I'd love to look at this article and be able to figure out:

  • What are the most widely spoken languages (population estimates would be great),
  • Where are they are spoken (one of the maps almost does that, but not very clearly outlined)
  • It probably needs to be split into official national languages, lingua franca, and first language statistics
  • Some people are looking for information about languages in Africa today, while others want history and classifications of those languages, If you fail to separate them out enough it can be very confusing (see Lingua franca for an example of mixing the two)
  • Some description of what is interesting or unique about some African languages (famously, the popping sounds and the tonal qualities that enables communication by drum, and some interesting use of prefixes.) User:KeithWright
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