Book contents
- Conversations on Dictionaries
- Conversations on Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Ancient Greek
- 2 Esperanto
- 3 German
- 4 Chinese
- 5 Hybrid Languages
- 6 English
- 7 French
- 8 Italian
- 9 Arabic
- 10 Hebrew
- 11 Indigenous Languages
- 12 Irish
- 13 African Languages
- 14 Nahuatl
- 15 Yiddish
- 16 Portuguese
- 17 Japanese
- 18 Russian
- 19 Quechua
- 20 Scandinavian
- 21 Spanish
- Epilogue
- Index
- References
13 - African Languages
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 December 2025
Edited by
Book contents
- Conversations on Dictionaries
- Conversations on Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Ancient Greek
- 2 Esperanto
- 3 German
- 4 Chinese
- 5 Hybrid Languages
- 6 English
- 7 French
- 8 Italian
- 9 Arabic
- 10 Hebrew
- 11 Indigenous Languages
- 12 Irish
- 13 African Languages
- 14 Nahuatl
- 15 Yiddish
- 16 Portuguese
- 17 Japanese
- 18 Russian
- 19 Quechua
- 20 Scandinavian
- 21 Spanish
- Epilogue
- Index
- References
Summary
Africa is a linguistically diverse continent, hosting between 1,250 and 2,100 languages. Some of the prominent languages include Swahili, Hausa, Lingala, Amharic, Yoruba, Oromo, Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho. Lexicography in African languages has been shaped by colonialism and subsequent language politics. Pioneer dictionaries were compiled by European prospectors, missionaries, and colonial administrators, primarily for their own use as they needed to learn African languages and communicate with local communities. While those early dictionaries made landmark contributions toward the development of African languages and some of them remain useful even today, they often failed to accurately represent African languages’ linguistic, cultural, and religious systems. Mother-tongue speakers of African languages started to drive internally motivated lexicographic projects in the twentieth century, prioritizing mother-tongue speakers as target users. Dictionaries began to occupy a prominent position in the development of African languages. This has resulted in some governments such as in South Africa investing in dictionary-making and universities offering academic and professional lexicographic training.
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- Conversations on DictionariesThe Universe in a Book, pp. 156 - 171Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Suggested Readings
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