Babel #3: The Only African Language

Africa has a huge number of languages, but most of those languages are used in a limited locale only, writes Gaston Dorren’s Babel. Hence the need for a lingua franca - a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. Enter Swahili (#12, 135 million speakers). Very few of those (just 15 million) are native speakers though; the overwhelming majority of speakers use it as the lingua franca! Earlier, it used the Arabic script, but after European colonialism, the script has changed to Roman.

 

Africa then is a continent where almost everyone knows a minimum of 3 languages – the mother tongue, a lingua franca, and what Dorren calls the VIL (Very Important Language). The VIL is the official language of the country, education above primary school is in the VIL, and urban folks use it a lot. The VIL is almost always a foreign language – English, French, Portuguese or Arabic (introduced much earlier, but still, not a native of the continent).

 

Why is the VIL in Africa a foreign language but that is not the case in the former colonies of Asia (Yes, I know India comes close to the Africa scenario on this, but more on that later)? The answer: Pre-colonial Africa never had empires “as large, powerful and bureaucratically sophisticated as Asia”, so no native language became dominant the way Chinese or Hindi-Urdu or Arabic did in Asia.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why we Deceive Ourselves

In their book, The Elephant in the Brain , the authors describe this weird aspect of deception that we practice: deceiving ourselves! That is so weird: “If our minds contain maps of our worlds, what good comes from having an inaccurate version of these maps?” The Sigmund Freud school of thought treats self-deception as a defense mechanism, “a way for the ego to protect itself”. The mind seeks to protect itself from anxiety and other negative emotions. Many object to this reasoning: since accurate information is so critical to our survival, surely distorting information would be dangerous. Wouldn’t the goal of protecting our self-esteem have been better achieved by making the brain’s self-esteem mechanism stronger instead? The new school of thought explains self-deception as “primarily outward-facing, manipulative, and ultimately self-serving”. This is based on Thomas Schelling’s work on game theory: “In a variety of scenarios, limiting or sabotaging yourself is the winn...
Read more

Europe #3 - Innsbruck

The last city we visited in Europe was Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. After the cold and windy experience (at times) of Paris and Netherlands, Innsbruck was a wonderful change – it didn’t feel that cold, it was not windy all of which made it easy to walk around. Something absolutely necessary given how scenic the place is.   Since the hotel check-in time was much later in the day, we left the baggage and went to the Swarovski HQ-cum-museum about an hour by bus from Innsbruck. The crystal exhibits were brilliant – colorful, bright, shiny. Jewellery aside, it was a display of what one can do with crystals. While my wife and daughter loved the jewellery, I liked the superhero themed exhibits of Batman, Spiderman, the Hulk, and Star Wars. We didn’t buy anything there, though we did buy stuff in the Swarovski store in Innsbruck – jewellery, not the superhero stuff.   Innsbruck is a major tourist attraction during the skiing season but now in summer, we saw many groups of ...
Read more

The Thrill of the Chase

So many people complain about the difficulty in making decisions while shopping. Do you buy Brand X that gives 20% extra free? Or Brand Y that has 10% off? Or Brand Z that gives something else free with it? Do you buy that flat screen TV today or wait for the sale at Diwali? Now since the customer is king, shouldn’t companies be simplifying pricing choices? Like maybe offering consistently low prices all the time? Not so fast, as the US store, JC Penney discovered to its cost. Turns out that while people do complain about pricing choices, they are irrational. Also, they enjoy the thrill of the chase. Huh? The word “sale” acts like a siren call for many people: it lures them in to make that purchase. Consistently low prices don’t do the same. Besides, if a competitor lowers their prices just one time of the year, and Poof! Suddenly that low price claim becomes suspect in shoppers’ eyes. Then there are those sites that offer coupons: have lunch at Restaurant A on Wedne...
Read more