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28 results in African and Caribbean language and linguistics

Page 1 of 2

Liquid Languages
  • Constructing Languages in Late Modern Cultures of Diffusion
  • Britta Schneider
  • Published online:
    28 July 2025
    Print publication:
    14 August 2025
  • Which ideas about language are prevalent in cultures that are not framed in Western nationalist and literate traditions? How do people conceptualise language if speakers of the same community are multilingual, have access to different language resources and only partially share ideas about what is right and wrong in language? This book explores the 'liquid' properties of language, highlighting how languages, as discursive-material assemblages, can differ in their degree of fixity. It provides a linguistic anthropological study of the language ideologies in Belize, where ethnic belonging and language practice do not necessarily match and where stable language norms are not always considered a value. Scrutinising ethnographic data and examinations of local performances of English, it shows that languages emerge in relation to belonging, prestige and material culture. Bringing to the fore liquid language cultures, it provides important additions to our understanding of late modern language assemblages in a globalising world.

Kielezo cha Insha
  • Shaaban Robert
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    17 April 2025
    Print publication:
    01 December 2024
  • The definitive Kiswahili guide to essay writing with pertinent examples.

    Kielezo cha Insha is the earliest guide to essay writing in Kiswahili, published by Wits University Press in 1954.

    After Tanzania's independence in 1961 the book was not available for several decades because of the political and economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

    The book covers pertinent issues in composition writing, including the purpose and types of composition, preparation, structure, language and style, cohesion, objectivity and punctuation. It includes 60 model essays together with Robert's thoughts and perspectives on the issues he addresses. The topics include some of the issues current at the time, such as 'secret marriages', culture, the environment, language and nationhood, patriotism, women's oppression, health, and the meaning of life and death.

    After being out of print for more than sixty years, Wits University Press has reissued the text as a testament to its enduring historical value. Kielezo cha Insha is an example of Robert's educational and pedagogical writing at its best.

Lexical Reconstruction in Central Chadic
  • A Comparative Study of Vowels, Consonants and Prosodies
  • H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    09 November 2023
    Print publication:
    23 November 2023
  • Due to a long history of contact, the Chadic languages are the internally most diverse of the Afroasiatic language families, especially in terms of their sound systems. In this ground-breaking study, the author draws on his extensive research experience to unpack the morpho-phonological principles that underpin the languages' diverse prosody effects, arguing that massive variation results from diachronic processes called 'prosodification' of segmental units. The study compares data from 66 of the 79 known languages from the Central branch of the Chadic language family, most of them unwritten and under-researched. It traces language changes for 228 lexical items that can be reconstructed from the proto-language's basic vocabulary, unearthing typological features that link Central Chadic to its deep Afroasiatic heritage. It is accompanied by a set of online appendixes, providing the full analytical apparatus of all lexical reconstructions, with explicit identification of each of the diachronic sound changes and processes involved.

Linguistic Response to the Taboo of Death in Egyptian Arabic
  • Magdalena Zawrotna
  • Published by:
    Jagiellonian University Press
    Published online:
    14 October 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2021
  • When Egyptians fear death or apprehend it, or when they are confronted with the taboo of death, they tend to submit themselves to God's will, hoping that he will save them from danger. While taking refuge in God, they resort to religious formulae, choosing from what seems to be an endless collection of prophylactic, protective or soothing incantations and blessings. The role of religion in everyday social interactions of Egyptians cannot be overemphasised. It regulates human relations and helps to catalyse the inner fears of man. Religious formulae denote complex cultural concepts by relating to multi-layered and multi-dimensional, recurrent situations. This embedding in sociocultural context is a crucial feature of formulae. Thus, 'formulaicity' is the lens through which this book analyses the response to the taboo of death in Egypt.

A Historical Phonology of Central Chadic
  • Prosodies and Lexical Reconstruction
  • H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    26 May 2022
    Print publication:
    02 June 2022
  • Of all of the African language families, the Chadic languages belonging to the Afroasiatic macro-family are highly internally diverse due to a long history and various scenarios of language contact. This pioneering study explores the development of the sound systems of the 'Central Chadic' languages, a major branch of the Chadic family. Drawing on and comparing field data from about 60 different Central Chadic languages, H. Ekkehard Wolff unpacks the specific phonological principles that underpin the Chadic languages' diverse phonological evolution, arguing that their diversity results to no little extent from historical processes of 'prosodification' of reconstructable segments of the proto-language. The book offers meticulous historical analyses of some 60 words from Proto-Central Chadic, in up to 60 individual modern languages, including both consonants and vowels. Particular emphasis is on tracing the deep-rooted origin and impact of palatalisation and labialisation prosodies within a phonological system that, on its deepest level, recognises only one vowel phoneme */a/.

A History of the Hausa Language
  • Reconstruction and Pathways to the Present
  • Paul Newman
  • Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • With more than sixty million speakers across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Ghana Hausa is one of the most widely spoken African languages. It is known for its rich phonology and complex morphological and verbal systems. Written by the world's leading expert on Hausa, this ground-breaking book is a synthesis of his life's work, and provides a lucid and comprehensive history of the language. It describes Hausa as it existed in former times and sets out subsequent changes in phonology, including tonology, morphology, grammar, and lexicon. It also contains a large loanword inventory, which highlights the history of Hausa's interaction with other languages and peoples. It offers new insights not only on Hausa in the past, but also on the Hausa language as spoken today. This book is an invaluable resource for specialists in Hausa, Chadic, Afroasiatic, and other African languages as well as for general historical linguists and typologists.

Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa
  • Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, Ellen Hurst-Harosh, Heather Brookes
  • Published online:
    20 August 2021
    Print publication:
    09 September 2021
  • The ways in which young people use language provides fascinating insights into language practice and contact. Written by a team of key scholars in the field, this book describes and theorises 'male, in-group, street-aligned, youth language practice' in urban centres in Africa, exploring the creative use of language, and its function in peer sociality and contestation of social identities. The book contributes to theoretical debates surrounding multimodal language, language contact, standards and variation, and language change. It highlights that 'youth languages' are not to be confused with the urban languages, varieties, and vernaculars of the general population, and that claims of autonomy and candidacy as national languages are flawed. The book demonstrates that the youthful practices of males are nevertheless worthy of scholarly attention: the framing of youth languages within the field of language contact will stimulate situated and comprehensive studies of the role and significance of youth practices.

The Transformative Power of Language
  • From Postcolonial to Knowledge Societies in Africa
  • Edited by Russell H. Kaschula, H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    10 September 2020
  • Language has played a pivotal role in societal transformation in postcolonial Africa towards the creation of globally competitive knowledge societies; however so far, this role has been under-researched and under-estimated. This volume addresses this gap in the literature, by bringing together a team of globally-recognised scholars to explore the effect of language on African postcolonial societies, and how it has contributed to achieving 'mental decolonisation'. A range of languages are explored, both imported (ex-colonial) and indigenous African, and case studies from different spheres of public discourse are investigated, from universities to legal settings. Demonstrating that multilingualism is a resource for, rather than barrier to, successful transformation, this book brings the intellectualisation and institutionalisation of African languages to the forefront of development discourse, and provides an insightful snap-shot of how current academic research, public discourse, political activism and social community engagement have contributed to societal transformation in South Africa.

English in Multilingual South Africa
  • The Linguistics of Contact and Change
  • Edited by Raymond Hickey
  • Published online:
    07 November 2019
    Print publication:
    21 November 2019
  • South Africa is a country characterised by great linguistic diversity. Large indigenous languages, such as isiZulu and isiXhosa, are spoken by many millions of people, as well as the languages with European roots, such as Afrikaans and English, which are spoken by several millions and used by many more in daily life. This situation provides a plethora of contact scenarios, all of which have resulted in language variation and change, and which forms the main focus of this insightful volume. Written by a team of leading scholars, it investigates a range of sociolinguistic factors and the challenges that South Africans face as a result of multilingualism and globalisation in both education and social interaction. The historical background to English in South Africa provides a framework within which the interfaces with other languages spoken in the country are scrutinised, whilst highlighting processes of contact, bilingualism, code-switching and language shift.

A History of African Linguistics
  • Edited by H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    31 May 2019
    Print publication:
    13 June 2019
  • Bringing together a team of leading scholars, this volume forms the first global history of African linguistics as an autonomous academic discipline, covering Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Defining African linguistics, the volume describes its emergence from a 'colonial science' at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe, where it was first established mainly in academic institutions of former colonial powers. Its riddance from the 'colonial project' is traced, following its 'de-colonialisation' and subsequent spread from imperialist Europe across all inhabited continents, with particular reference to its academic establishment in the various regions of Africa. Providing inside views of African linguistic research and its ramifications over time, active researchers in its various subfields present highly informative accounts of current and past research priorities and achievements. The twenty-six authors are themselves representatives of the various regions of both the world and Africa, in which African linguistics has become entrenched in academic institutions.

The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics
  • Edited by H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Published online:
    23 May 2019
    Print publication:
    16 May 2019
  • This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive state-of-the-art study of 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' since its beginnings as a 'colonial science' at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. Compiled by 56 internationally renowned scholars, this ground breaking study looks at past and current research on 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' under the impact of paradigmatic changes from 'colonial' to 'postcolonial' perspectives. It addresses current trends in the study of the role and functions of language, African and other, in pre- and postcolonial African societies. Highlighting the central role that the 'language factor' plays in postcolonial transformation processes of sociocultural modernization and economic development, it also addresses more recent, particularly urban, patterns of communication, and outlines applied dimensions of digitalization and human language technology.

Variation, Versatility and Change in Sociolinguistics and Creole Studies
  • John Russell Rickford
  • Foreword by Gillian Sankoff
  • Published online:
    22 January 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2019
  • By the award-winning former president of the Linguistic Society of America, this collection of some of John Russell Rickford's pioneering works shows how linguists in sociolinguistics and creole studies can benefit from utilizing data, theories and methods from each other, as they more frequently did in the 1960s and 1970s, when both subfields, in their modern forms at least, were getting started. The volume addresses fundamental sociolinguistic topics such as social class, style, fieldwork, speech community, sociolinguistic competence and language attitudes with data from Guyanese and other Caribbean creoles. Recurrent concepts are also considered including language versatility, variation and change, vernacular use, school success and criminal justice in African America and the Caribbean, using models, case studies and methodologies from sociolinguistics. Theoretical and applied scholars, students apprehensive about sociolinguistic fieldwork, and those considering dynamic methods like implicational scaling about which little is written in linguistics textbooks, will find this volume invaluable. Includes a Foreword by Gillian Sankoff.

Dictionary of the Hausa Language
  • Volume 1, Hausa-English
  • Charles Henry Robinson
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1925
  • Hausa is an African language originating in Niger and northern Nigeria and spoken widely in West and Central Africa as a lingua franca. Charles Henry Robinson (1861–1925) was the first student of the short-lived Hausa Association, formed in 1891 to promote the study of the Hausa Language and people. The Association sponsored Robinson to stay in northern Nigeria from 1894 to 1895 to gain more experience in the language. On his return Robinson published an anthology of Hausa texts in 1896 and a Hausa grammar in 1897 as well as this two-volume dictionary in 1899. His efforts contributed greatly to Western knowledge of the language despite criticisms of his relatively short experience of Hausa-speaking communities. Volume 1 is a Hausa–English dictionary. The version reissued here is the 1925 fourth edition, for which the Hausa–English dictionary was re-written and expanded.

Blood on the Tides
  • The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology
  • Isidore Okpewho
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    25 May 2014
  • The Ozidi Saga is one of Africa's best known prosimetric epics, set in the Delta region of Nigeria. Blood on the Tides examines the epic -- a tale of a warrior and his sorcerer grandmother's revenge upon the assassins who killed her son -- both as an example of oral literature and as a reflection of the specific social and political concerns of the Nigerian Delta and the country as a whole. Okpewho examines various iterations of the saga, including a performance of the entire saga in 1963 in Ibadan by the folk artist Okabou Okobolo. This performance was subsequently transcribed, translated, and edited by the renowned Nigerian poet, playwright, and scholar John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo. Isidore Okpewho is Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies, English, and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University (SUNY). He is the author of The Epic in Africa, Myth in Africa, African Oral Literature, and Once Upon a Kingdom. An award-winning novelist, he has published four titles: The Victims, The Last Duty, Tides, and Call Me By My Rightful Name.

English in the Caribbean
  • Variation, Style and Standards in Jamaica and Trinidad
  • Dagmar Deuber
  • Published online:
    05 April 2014
    Print publication:
    03 April 2014
  • This book presents an in-depth study of English as spoken in two major anglophone Caribbean territories, Jamaica and Trinidad. Based on data from the International Corpus of English, it focuses on variation at the morphological and syntactic level between the educated standard and more informal educated spoken usage. Dagmar Deuber combines quantitative analyses across several text categories with qualitative analyses of transcribed text passages that are grounded in interactional sociolinguistics and recent approaches to linguistic style and identity. The discussion is situated in the context of variation in the Caribbean and the wider context of world Englishes, and the sociolinguistic background of Jamaica and Trinidad is also explored. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the fields of sociolinguistics, world Englishes, and language contact.

Initia Amharica

Out in Africa
  • Same-Sex Desire in Sub-Saharan Literatures and Cultures
  • Chantal Zabus
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    21 November 2013
  • Homosexuality was and still is thought to be quintessentially 'un-African'. Yet in this book Chantal Zabus examines the anthropological, cultural and literary representations of male and female same-sex desire in a pan-African context from the nineteenth century to the present. Reaching back to early colonial contacts between Europe and Africa, and covering a broad geographical spectrum, along a north-south axis from Mali to South Africa and an east-west axis from Senegal to Kenya, here is a comparative approach encompassing two colonial languages (English and French) and some African languages. 'Out in Africa' charts developments in Sub-Saharan African texts and contexts through the work of 7 colonial writers and some 25 postcolonial writers. These texts grow in complexity from roughly the 1860s, through the 1990s with the advent of queer theory, up to 2010. The author identifies those texts that present, in a subterraneous way at first and then with increased confidence, homosexuality-as-an-identity rather than an occasional or ritualized practice, as was the case in the early ethnographic imagination. The work sketches out an evolutionary pattern in representing male and female same-sex desire in the novel and other texts, as well as in the cultural and political contexts that oppose such desires. Chantal Zabus holds the IUF [Institut universitaire de France] Chair of Comparative Postcolonial Literatures and Gender Studies at the University Paris 13 and at the Universities Sorbonne-Paris-Cité, France I. She is author of 'Between Rites and Rights'; 'The African Palimpsest: Indigenization of Language in the West African Europhone Novel', and 'Tempests after Shakespeare'.She is presently Editor-in-Chief of the on-line journal 'Postcolonial Text'.

Writing Africa in the Short Story
  • Edited by Ernest N. Emenyonu
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    21 November 2013
  • African writers have, much more than the critics, recognized the beauty and potency of the short story. Always the least studied in African literature classrooms and the most critically overlooked genre in African literature today, the African short story is now given the attention it deserves. Contributors here take a close look at the African short story to re-define its own peculiar pedigree, chart its trajectory, critique its present state and examine its creative possibilities. They examine how the short story and the novel complement each other, or exist in contradistinction, within the context of culture and politics, history and public memory, legends, myths and folklore. Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars from US, UK and African universities. Nigeria: HEBN

A Dictionary of the Suahili Language
  • With Introduction Containing an Outline of a Suahili Grammar
  • Compiled by Johann Ludwig Krapf
  • Published online:
    05 October 2013
    Print publication:
    26 April 2012
    First published in:
    1882
  • Johan Ludwig Krapf (1810–81), a German-born member of the Church Missionary Society in East Africa, is regarded as the founder of Swahili studies in Europe. Having pursued an interest in Oriental culture from an early age, he first went to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) as a missionary. During his travels in Africa, he became the first European to see Mount Kenya; but he also considered the potential of Swahili as a lingua franca. Krapf published the first printed text in Swahili, and the first systematic Swahili grammar, as well as being the first to bring Swahili manuscripts to Europe. Another in a series of firsts is this lexicon, which was published posthumously in 1882. The Swahili dictionary, pioneering as it was in its day, is still of historical interest, especially because it contains notes on Swahili culture and customs, as well as an outline of the language's grammar.

Zulu–English Dictionary
  • John William Colenso
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    02 August 2012
    First published in:
    1861
  • John William Colenso (1814–83) was appointed the first Bishop of Natal in 1853 and settled there in 1855. He devoted great energy to developing the diocese, overseeing the completion of the cathedral in Pietermaritzburg, the building of churches in Durban and Richmond and the establishment of mission stations. He also learned Zulu and set up a printing press. He published a Zulu grammar in 1855, within months of his arrival, and translated the New Testament into Zulu. This substantial Zulu–English dictionary appeared in 1861, with financial support from the colonial legislature. It contains over 10,000 entries, many with examples of usage, and includes loan words from European languages. The Preface provides brief notes on phonology, and explains Colenso's orthographic principles, criteria for selection, and the structure of the entries. The dictionary remained a standard work even after Colenso's death, and a fourth revised edition was published in 1905.

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