scholarly journals LOSING THE FLAVOUR? FROM ORATURE TO LITERATURE, AND ON CHOICES WHEN COMPILING DICTIONARIES FOR UN WRITTEN AFRICAN LANGUAGES

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
E Wolff

Any hitherto unwritten language, in Africa as elsewhere, as soon as it becomes the object of linguistic and philological documentation and research, automatically crosses the Rubicon from oral to written and undergoes the first steps from orature to literature. This almost natural process may be studied under at least two perspectives: that of the linguistic and cultural ‘costs” of such transition, and that of the ideological burden in terms of stereotype and prejudice when researchers with a ‘Western’ background (by extension including researchers, also in Africa, who have been trained under the impact of ‘Western’ scholarship) approach languages and cultures of ‘others’. This links up with lexicographic work on languages which are predominantly or exclusively used for oral communication, by influencing the choices that lexicographers face in terms of lemma identification and speech variability when compiling the – often first ever – bilingual dictionary of a hitherto unwritten language.

2021 ◽  
pp. 76-96
Author(s):  
Alexander Likhachev

Natural materials and processes represent the global substance reflecting and determining its formation and existence as a whole and in all its components. Revealing the reasons for their formation and manifestation is crucial. The paper highlights the two main factors: «influences» and «gradients». Influences are interpreted as the impact of some substances and events on other similar parameters, and gradients are vector changes and differences in systems composition, structure, properties, states, energy and thermodynamic parameters. To provide an insight into the role and significance of the above factors and reasons, an attempt was made to consider their potential manifestation throughout the general world history within the existing knowledge about it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-119
Author(s):  
Parsaoran Siahaan ◽  
Ermawati Dewi ◽  
Endi Suhendi

The 21st-Century skills are skills that must be possessed by students to compete in the era of globalization. The provisioning of these skills to students can go through the physics learning process at school. Introduction, Connection, Application, Reflection, and Extension (ICARE) learning model is one of the learning models that can be applied in Physics learning in high school to train students' skills in critical thinking, creative thinking, communication, and collaboration. The purpose of this study was to determine the improvement of communication and collaboration skills of students after applying the ICARE learning model. The research method used was quasi-experimental with a single-group interrupted time series design. The sample were high school students in one of the Karawang districts, consisting of 12 male students and 15 female students. During the learning activities, students will be given a worksheet with several different questions each meeting tailored to the material being studied, and the answer will be used as a source for analyzing their written communication skills. These questions lead students to be able to communicate the results of their experiments following scientific principles. Experimental activities conducted by students will be analyzed to measure their collaborative skills, and students' presentations will be used to measure their oral communication skills. The improvement of those three aspects was analyzed at each meeting. The results showed that the implementation of learning using the ICARE approach was able to improve the ability of students to collaborate with an average score of 7.87 at the first meeting to 15.93 at the second meeting. While the communication, especially report-writing skills of students, increased from the average of1.53 at the first meeting to 3.6 at the second meeting. The aspect of making presentation material increased from 1.67 to 3.17, and the aspect of oral presentation increased from 1.53 to 3.53 at the second meeting. Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that students' communication and collaboration skills improve after the ICARE learning model implemented


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Herman M. Batibo

Arab travellers and traders along the eastern African coast, more than 1000 years ago, were the first Arabic speaking people to bring Arabic language in contact with the other African languages in eastern and later southern Africa. Over the years, Arabic gained a lot of influence in the region. The impact of Arabic can be seen, especially in old scripts, loanwords, Arabic accents and sound features in some of the local languages.This article examines the nature and extent of contact situations between Arabic and two languages, namely Kiswahili, spoken in eastern Africa, and Setswana, spoken in southern Africa. The study is based on the Language Contact Theory, which states that the nature, length and intensity of language contact are the key factors determining the linguistic and sociolinguistic processes that take place. Contact between languages could be either direct or indirect. The main argument of the study is that the extent of influence of a language on another depends not only on the nature of contact, but also, and mainly, on the length and intensity of contact. The paper highlights the domains in which elements of Arabic origin have infiltrated or been adopted in these languages.


Literator ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketiwe Ndhlovu

The development of African languages into languages of science and technology is dependent on action being taken to promote the use of these languages in specialised fields such as technology, commerce, administration, media, law, science and education among others. One possible way of developing African languages is the compilation of specialised dictionaries (Chabata 2013). This article explores how parallel corpora can be interrogated using a bilingual concordancer (ParaConc) to extract bilingual terminology that can be used to create specialised bilingual dictionaries. An English–Ndebele Parallel Corpus was used as a resource and through ParaConc, an alphabetic list was compiled from which headwords and possible translations were sought. These translations provided possible terms for entry in a bilingual dictionary. The frequency feature and ‘hot words’ tool in ParaConc were used to determine the suitability of terms for inclusion in the dictionary and for identifying possible synonyms, respectively. Since parallel corpora are aligned and data are presented in context (Key Word in Context), it was possible to draw examples showing how headwords are used. Using this approach produced results quickly and accurately, whilst minimising the process of translating terms manually. It was noted that the quality of the dictionary is dependent on the quality of the corpus, hence the need for creating a representative and clean corpus needs to be emphasised. Although technology has multiple benefits in dictionary making, the research underscores the importance of collaboration between lexicographers, translators, subject experts and target communities so that representative dictionaries are created.


2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-634 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. A. Raschky

Abstract. Natural hazards can be seen as a function of a specific natural process and human (economic) activity. Whereby the bulk of literature on natural hazard management has its focus on the natural process, an increasing number of scholars is emphasizing the importance of human activity in this context. Existing literature has identified certain socio-economic factors that determine the impact of natural disasters on society. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the effects of the institutional framework that influences human behavior by setting incentives and to point out the importance of institutional vulnerability. Results from an empirical investigation of large scale natural disasters between 1984 and 2004 show that countries with better institutions experience less victims and lower economic losses from natural disasters. In addition, the results suggest a non-linear relationship between economic development and economic disaster losses. The suggestions in this paper have implications for the discussion on how to deal with the adverse effects of natural hazards and how to develop efficient adaption strategies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Ali Soltani ◽  
Mohsen Ghafari

This study investigates the probable relationship between Iranian EFL learners' self-perception and assertiveness and their oral communication skills. A sample of 80 male and female Iranian EFL students participated in this study. The participants were initially required to complete Belbin's self-perception questionnaire, they were then asked to complete Oral Communication Strategies Inventory (OCSI). The results of the data analysis indicated that there was a strong positive correlation between the two variables and thus the higher the level of self-perception and assertiveness, the higher the level of communication will be. Keywords: Communication Strategies, Self-perception, Assertiveness.


Author(s):  
Raymond Siebetcheu

This paper illustrates the language policy implemented by the African Union (AU). It highlights the impact of language choices within AU institutions on local populations. Sixty years after the independence of most African countries and despite the fact that over two thousand languages are spoken in this continent, language policy is still highly Eurocentric. Moreover, the exclusive use of these few ex colonial languages, not known by the vast majority of the population, has social and linguistic repercussions on Africans who are unable to participate in the political life of their respective countries. AU has made some interesting proposals for the promotion and diffusion of local African languages, but much remains to be done.


Author(s):  
Parveen Sarjit Sidhu

<p>This action research was conducted in order to investigate the students experience and perception towards using the video making assessment approach when presenting their oral communication assessment. This was to see the impact on the students compared to presenting the traditional way in-class. Forty-five (45) respondents undertaking DUE 3012 - Communicative English 2 in Polytechnic Balik Pulau, Information Technology Department, participated in this study. The respondents had to make a video based on Chapter 1- Product and Services whereby it will be evaluated as their oral presentation assessment. A Likert Scale questionnaire was distributed and the data were tabulated using descriptive statistics. The outcome of the study was that the respondents had a positive perception towards this approach and it helped them to build their confidence level to use the English Language. Besides that, the respondents felt that this approach of assessment was successful and beneficial in helping them to understand the chapter better. <strong></strong></p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ousmane Sall

West African countries especially Senegal, have a very rich history of written and oral communication based on their culture and traditions. Today, Senegal is inescapable about the adoption and use of new technologies in Africa. Senegal experienced a boom of cell phones users over the past 5 years in 2012 for example, we noticed “88% mobile subscriptions” compared with “46% mobile subscriptions in 2008” {world bank,2013}. That explains mobile phones are no more to make a call or to send a text message but also to interact with people around and entertain. In fact, digital communication is expanding in all Senegalese spheres like the workplace, school, universities... in the latter half of the 20th century before the explosion of social media, people only depended on old media like TV, Radio, Newspapers… to get informed. For this study, we are going to focus on how social media are impacting economically and politically on Senegalese society and how young people are managing the transition between traditional media and new media.


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