West African Languages Congress

1963 ◽  
Vol 6 (03) ◽  
pp. 30-31
Author(s):  
Joseph Greenberg

The Third West African Languages Congress took place in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from March 26 to April 1, 1963. This was the third of the annual meetings of those interested in West African languages sponsored by the West African Languages Survey, previous meetings having been held in Accra (1961) and Dakar (1962). The West African Languages Survey is a Ford Foundation project. Additional financial assistance from UNESCO and other sources contributed materially to the scope and success of the meeting. This meeting was larger than previous ones both in attendance and in number of papers presented and, it may be said, in regard to the scientific level of the papers presented. The official participants, seventy-two in number, came from virtually every country in West Africa, from Western European countries and from the United States. The linguistic theme of the meeting was the syntax of West African languages, and a substantial portion of the papers presented were on this topic. In addition, there was for the first time at these meetings a symposium on the teaching of English, French and African languages in Africa. The papers of this symposium will be published in the forthcoming series of monographs planned as a supplement to the new Journal of West African Languages. The other papers are to appear in the Journal of African Languages edited by Jack Berry of the School of Oriental and African Studies.

Author(s):  
Ulrike Gut

This chapter describes the history, role, and structural properties of English in the West African countries the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the anglophone part of Cameroon, and the island of Saint Helena. It provides an overview of the historical phases of trading contact, British colonization and missionary activities and describes the current role of English in these multilingual countries. Further, it outlines the commonalities and differences in the vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the varieties of English spoken in anglophone West Africa. It shows that Liberian Settler English and Saint Helenian English have distinct phonological and morphosyntactic features compared to the other West African Englishes. While some phonological areal features shared by several West African Englishes can be identified, an areal profile does not seem to exist on the level of morphosyntax.


2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-362
Author(s):  
D. Coleman ◽  
R. Blackburn

Henry Smeathman (1742–1786), best known for his essay on the west African termites, travelled to Sierra Leone in 1771 to collect naturalia for a group of wealthy sponsors. One of these sponsors, Dru Drury (1724–1803), was keen on African insects. Drury later described and illustrated many of these in the third volume of his Illustrations of natural history (1782). Two years after Drury died, his collection was auctioned in London. A key purchaser at this sale was Alexander Macleay (1767–1848), later appointed Colonial Secretary to New South Wales. His insects travelled with him to Sydney and are now in the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney. A number of these insects, collected by Smeathman and despatched from Sierra Leone, appear to be extant in the Macleay Museum. Chief of our discoveries is the type specimen for Goliathus drurii originally figured by Drury in Illustrations of natural history, volume 3, plate XL (1782). By matching other extant insects to the text and illustrations in the same volume we believe we have found type specimens for Scarabaeus torquata Drury, 1782 , and Papilio antimachus Drury, 1782 .


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1.2) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Kole Odutola

As a child born and battered (not buttered) in Lagos, my thoughts about Ibadan people are three-fold. I think of a different accent when they speak English. When you read Niyi Osundare’s article you will moderate that notion. The other stereotype that comes to the mind of this Lagos boy is that Ibadan houses do not have street addresses but you can describe where you are going or looking for by Agboole Oloolu or Agboole Alabẹni (as in Bimbo Adelakun’s Novel). The third stereotype is that people of Ibadan eat a lot of ẹ̀kọ and ọọ̀ ̀lẹ̀ (as in mó̩inmó ́ i̩ ́n-beans pudding in English). I cannot really trace where I got that last one. It will be great to read what people of Ibadan think about Lagos city, i ̀lú iná ń jó ogiri o ̀ ̀ sá - The city where fire burns be the walls remain. The place we sing its praises as aromi ́ ṣá lẹ̀gbẹ lẹ̀gbẹ -The city where water flows in abundance. Let me tell you my story of Ibadan through the eyes of writers and thinkers. My maternal grandmother was a mid-wife at Adeọyọ Hospital. My first train ride was to Ibadan and each time I hear the name Ibadan the smell of puff puff by Mama Room Two (aka Mrs. Lufadeju to adults) takes me over. Ten much later in life, the poem by J.P Clark in the West African verse 1 This is a revised and expanded version of a review originally published in TCN: The Cultural Newspaper on January 29, 2020. 332 Kole Odutola competed with the puff puff of Mama Room Two. To mention Ibadan and not recite the poem was like an academic crime.


Author(s):  
Daniel Bailey ◽  
Jane Shallcross ◽  
Christopher H. Logue ◽  
Simon A. Weller ◽  
Liz Evans ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.


Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Sarr

Senegal is a melting pot of several civilizations mainly originated from the West (Europe) and the East (the Arab world). Assuming that language and culture are intrinsically related, the settlement of those people and their status as dominant minority sparked and strengthened the use of their languages in formal domains. In the long ran, as they became domesticated, thus now considered African languages because they have contributed to mold the cultural identity of younger generation, they involve in all linguistic interaction. Arab, in its classical form, remains a symbol of Islam which earns it a certain degree of sacredness. Nevertheless the contact situation with the other languages forced it to crossbreed in special ways like borrowings and interferences. As for the other foreign languages, namely French, English, Spanish, and German at a least extent, they are made to carry the weight of local cultures.


Zograf ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Dragan Vojvodic

In the katholikon of the monastery of Praskvica there are remains of two layers of post-Byzantine wall-painting: the earlier, from the third quarter of the sixteenth century, and later, from the first half of the seventeenth century, which is the conclusion based on stylistic analysis and technical features. The portions of frescoes belonging to one or the other layer can be clearly distinguished from one another and the content of the surviving representations read more thoroughly than before. It seems that the remains of wall-painting on what originally was the west facade of the church also belong to the earlier layer. It is possible that the church was not frescoed in the lifetime of its ktetor, Balsa III Balsic.


1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Oldfield

One of the most boldly conceived assaults on benighted Africa during the nineteenth century was that undertaken by mainline Protestant denominations in the United States. With the brash confidence characteristic of the age, hundreds of American missionaries were dispatched from New York and Baltimore to convert the heathen tribes of Africa and wrest a continent from ruin. If the experience of the Protestant Episcopal church is at all typical, however, these efforts not infrequently aroused suspicion and open hostility. In fact, Episcopal penetration of Liberia in the second half of the second century was remarkable for a long and bitter contest with black nationalists who were intent on using the church as a vehicle for their own personal and racial ambitions.


Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akin L. Mabogunje

Opening ParagraphDuring the sitting of the West African Lands Committee in 1912, the witnesses who were called before the Committee from Egba Division emphatically stated that sales of both farm and town lands had been going on in Egbaland for some considerable time and had become accepted as normal. Equally significant was the vigour with which witnesses from all the other Yoruba sub-tribes countered the suggestion that sale of land existed or was permitted by the traditional land law and custom. H. L. Ward Price in his report also pointed out that sales of land had been going on in Egbaland for at least sixty years before he was writing in the 1930's. From the evidence he collected, it would seem that land sales dated back to between 1860 and 1880.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document