Routes: language and the identity of African literature

1999 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moradewun Adejunmobi
Keyword(s):  
African Literature ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Theoretical Formulation ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Actual Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Significant Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Writing

The debate over the language of African literature has continued to generate significant interest ever since the emergence of African literary writing in European languages. Discussions of this debate have in the past often highlighted the inherently normative character of the idea of an African literature in African languages. By tracing the history of the debate, this paper seeks to distinguish between the actual role played by African languages in the emergence of a literature identified as African by its practitioners, and the ideological function of the debate for Africans who write in European languages. From this perspective, appeals for a literature in indigenous languages appear to serve the purpose of ethnic signification on behalf of a tradition of writing that continues to rely on European languages at the levels of both creative practice and theoretical formulation.

scholarly journals The Choice of Language for African Creative Writers

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edadi Ilem Ukam
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Native Languages ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Know How ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
African Writers

Language issue has been considered as a major problem to Africa. The continent has so many distinct languages as well as distinct ethnic groups. It is the introduction of the colonial languages that enable Africans to communicate with each other intelligibly: otherwise, Africa has no one central language. Among the colonial languages are English, French, Arabic and Portuguese which today serve as lingua franca in the mix of multiple African languages. Based on that, there is a serious argument among African critics about which language(s) would be authentic in writing African literature: colonial languages which serve as lingua franca, or the native indigenous languages. While some postcolonial African creative writers like Ngugi have argued for the authenticity and a return in writing in indigenous African languages, avoiding imperialism and subjugation of the colonisers, others like Achebe are in the opinion that the issue of language should not be the main reason in defining African literature: any languagecan be adopted to portray the lifestyles and peculiarities of Africans. The paper is therefore, designed to address the language debate among African creative writers. It concludes that although it is authentic to write in one’s native language so as to meet the target audience, yet many Africans receive their higher education in one of the colonial and/or European languages; and as such, majority do not know how to write in their native languages. Rather, they write in the imposed colonial languages in order tomeet a wider audience. Not until one or two major African languages are standardised, taught in schools, acquired by more than 80 per cent of Africans and used as common languages, the colonial languages would forever continue to have a greater influence in writing African literature. The paper recommendes that Africans should have one or two major African languages standardised, serving as common languages; also African literature should be written in both colonialand African languages in order to avoid the language debate by creative African writers. 

scholarly journals Literatura, Linguagem e Descolonização em Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Quênia) e Chinua Achebe (Nigéria)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Bruno Ribeiro Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Languages ◽  
African People ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Writers ◽  
The Many

A história de literatura africana contemporânea está repleta de debates que tratam de sua utilidade frente aos povos de África e a natureza dessa literatura. Através das ideias de dois escritores africanos, Chinua Achebe e Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, este artigo revisita a história das ideias desses autores em respeito à literatura africana e sua linguagem de escrita. Tratamos de perceber como dois autores da mesma geração, porém de locais diferentes, Nigéria e Quênia, respectivamente, pensaram a produção literária e sua função em África no período pós-colonial.Palavras-chave: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938-), Literatura Africana, Línguas Africanas AbstractThe history of African contemporary literature is full of debates that deal with its utility to the many African people and the nature of this literature. Through the ideas of two African writers, Chinua Achebe and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, we revisit the history of the ideas of these authors in relation to African literature and the language in which this literature is written. We try to perceive how authors from the same generation, but from different locals, Nigeria and Kenya, respectively, thought their literary production and its function in Africa in the post-colonial period.Keywords: Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938-), African Literatures, African Languages

The Afterlife of Oyono's Houseboy in the Swahili Schools Market: To Be or Not to Be Faithful to the Original

PMLA ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 128 (1) ◽  
pp. 178-184
Author(s):  
Ken Walibora Waliaula
Keyword(s):  
Italian Literature ◽  
African Literature ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
Chinua Achebe ◽  
African Languages ◽  
European Languages ◽  
False Proposition ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Asian Languages

Africa, the world's second-largest continent, speaks over two thousand languages but rarely translates itself. it is no wonder, therefore, that Ferdinand Oyono's francophone African classic Une vie de boy (1956), translated into at least twelve European and Asian languages, exists in only one African translation—that is, if we consider as non-African Oyono's original French and the English, Arabic, and Portuguese into which it was translated. Since 1963, when Obi Wali stated in his essay “The Dead End of African Literature” that African literature in English and French was “a clear contradiction, and a false proposition,” like “Italian literature in Hausa” (14), the question of the language of African literature has animated debate. Two decades later, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o restated Wali's contention, asserting that European languages led to African “spiritual subjugation” (9). Ngũgĩ argued strongly that African literature should be written in African languages. On the other hand, Chinua Achebe defended European languages, maintaining that they could “carry the weight of African experience” (62).

Time and the Calendar in Nineteenth - Century Asante: An Exploratory Essay

1980 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Technological Competence ◽  
Fixed Base ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Literate Culture ◽  
Literate Society

Historians recognize that the perception and organization of time are fundamental to the internal ordering of all human cultures. However, the history of pre-colonial Africa has largely been written to conform to the calendrical rhythms of an imposed European chronology. Regret over this discrepancy has been tempered by recognition of the very real problems involved in rectifying it. Chief among these is the fact that linear chronology per se -- in purist interpretation requiring numbered series derived from a fixed base, and therefore the mnemonic support of a graphic record -- is beyond the technological competence of any pre-literate society. However, the inability to maintain chronologically precise memorials of the past by no means precludes the existence of sophisticated mechanisms for ordering and dividing temps courant. That is, a historical sense disordered or dissolved through the agency of unassisted, and thus all too fallible, human memory may happily co-exist with an exact (and often symbolically charged) calendrical time. Broadly speaking, the foregoing was the situation obtaining-in Asante in the nineteenth century. Time in nineteenth-century Asante, in a number of its aspects, is the subject of this paper.The establishment of a historical chronology in nineteenth-century Asante was severely inhibited, and in ultimate terms negated, by the absence of a literate culture. It is the case that rare and isolated individuals like oheneba Owusu Ansa (ca. 1822-1884) and oheneba Kwasi Boakye (1827-1904) acquired in foreign exile skills in European languages. However, Akan Twi was not effectively reduced to writing until the mid-nineteenth century, and then not in Asante. Thus, at the time of the British usurpation in 1896 Asante was still a pre-literate culture.

scholarly journals Gastronomic Vocabulary as a Feature of Nigerian English

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 820-836
Author(s):  
Anna A. Borisova ◽  
Yulia N. Ebzeeva
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
History Of

The World Englishes Paradigm studies various aspects of the English language characterized by specific peculiarities and changing as a result of contacts with indigenous languages and cultures. The history of English in Nigeria embraces 500 years of an interaction between highly different cultural systems and civilizations. Language contacts between English and the indigenous languages of Nigeria have led to its linguistic, cultural and intrastructural diversity. The aim of this article is to analyse the gastronomic vocabulary of Nigerian English influenced by the Nigerian worldview and culture. The research is focused on borrowings from African languages (mainly Yoruba and Igbo) that play a vital role in forming the culturally important lexicon of Nigerian English. The sources of the research material are dictionaries, as well as books by Nigerian writers composed in English. The analysis carried out in the course of the research allowed us to discover secondary nominations that denote Nigerian flora and cuisine, to reveal their metaphorical usage and to study corresponding figurative comparisons, idioms, proverbs and sayings. The investigation of gastronomic symbols in Nigerian speech shows universal processes of employing common gastronomic lexical units from real-life discourse as a basis for symbolization. The results of the study show that the gastronomic vocabulary and the images it creates constitute one of the most impressive Nigerian cultural codes. The knowledge of this vocabulary is instrumental in understanding those codes.

Aḥmadu Bamba's Pedagogy and the Development of ʿAjamī Literature

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fallou Ngom
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
African Literature ◽  
West African ◽  
African Studies ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
European Languages ◽  
History Of

Abstract:While African literature in European languages is well-studied, ʿajamī and its significance in the intellectual history of Africa remains one of the least investigated areas in African studies. Yet ʿajamī is one of the oldest and most widespread forms of literature in Africa. This article draws scholars' attention to this unmapped terrain of knowledge. First, it provides a survey of major West African ʿajamī literary traditions and examines the nexus between the pedagogy of Aḥmadu Bamba and the development of Wolofal (Wolof ʿajamī). Then, with reference to excerpts from Sëriñ Masoxna Ló's 1954 eulogy, it discusses the role of Wolofal in the diffusion of the Murīd ethos.

scholarly journals The “evidential paradigm” in Persian Classics: princes from Sarandip and other clue interpreters

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033-1062
Author(s):  
Natalia Yu. Chalisova
Keyword(s):  
Doctor Who ◽  
Persian Literature ◽  
Ibn Sina ◽  
The Past ◽  
European Languages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Indian Princess ◽  
Rich History ◽  
Evidential Paradigm

The rich history of Persian literature reception in the West includes such a  major event as the translation of the Persian narrative into European languages. This  has influenced the comprehension of a new epistemological paradigm in the humanities. The story under discussion is the first chapter of Amir Khusrav Dihlavi’s poem  “Eight Paradises” (Hašt bihišt, 1299–1301), in which the Indian princess tells the Sassanian king Bahram Gur a tale of three princes from Sarandip (Sri Lanka, Ceylon). As  the plot progresses, the princes restore the events of the past according to clues and  signs and repeatedly demonstrate their firāsa or ability to guess based on the analysis  of evidence. The stages of European reception of this story are well known. All this material is discussed in the methodologically famous work “Clues: Roots of an Evidential  Paradigm” (1986) by Carlo Ginzburg, who connected the “evidential paradigm” with  the Arabic firāsa, a “complex notion which, in general, designated the ability to pass, on  the basis of clues, directly from the known to the unknown”; Ginzburg noted that the  Sarandip princes were famous exactly for that ability. In this article, the Persian prose  sources of the Three princes tale are under discussion, as well as some other sagacity  stories from Persian didactic books (adab). Among the detective characters Abū ʻAlī ibn  Sīnā gained particular popularity; in some stories, the great philosopher and author of  the fundamental canon “The Medicine” acts as a doctor who recognizes a disease by  symptoms and at the same time as a detective who restores the course of events from  evidence and refutes unfair accusations before a judge.

Implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on the Development of Indigenous Languages of South Africa

2022 ◽  
pp. 152-161
Author(s):  
Mokgale Makgopa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
African Countries ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
European Languages ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
Communication Culture

Indigenous languages are the carriers of the communication, culture, and identity. It is through language that one expresses one's thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Unfortunately, colonialism created serious problems and obstacles in the development of African indigenous languages. European languages are used in Africa, rated as official languages of African countries while indigenous languages are sidelined and marginalized. Africa's own vision of decolonization, self-realization, and African Renaissance will always be a dream if African languages don't reclaim their rightful position in Africa. Intellectual decolonization is prudent for the realization of emancipation of the indigenous languages.

Écriture et interlecte littéraire chez Senghor : étude de sociolinguistique poétique (post)coloniale

2017 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jablonka
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
African Culture ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Anthropological Linguistics ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Literary Writing ◽  
Contact Situation

AbstractThe present article is an attempt to conceptualize Senghor’s poetic writing from a point of view of contact and variational linguistics. According to Senghor’s own formation in linguistics and anthropology, we take into account a perspective of anthropological linguistics of language contact between French and African languages in Senegal. By virtue of the colonial and postcolonial contact situation emerges an interlectal variety of French which impacts the literary writing. At the same time, Senghor’s poetic writing in an interlectal variety, which integrates also elements from Arabic and classical and modern European languages, enriches the repertoire of Francophony, one of his main political projects. The emerging French literary interlect represents a form of appropriation of African culture as a strategic aspect of Senghor’s civilizational project of

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