About 47 million people live in South Africa. The population is very heterogeneous along racial, national, linguistic, cultural and religious lines. The entire ethnically diverse population of South Africa - the result of a complex history of the formation of the country's population - is officially divided into 4 groups: Africans, whites, mulattos and Asians.
The main part, of course, are the indigenous people of the African continent - black Africans. There are more than 70% of them, white Afrikaners - about 10%, mulattos or, as they are called here, colored - 9%, and Indians and Asians - 2.5%.
Almost every tribe lives apart. Their living conditions, way of life, culture, religion, traditions, customs - a real exotic that you will not see anywhere else. You can get acquainted with it on special tours of the ethnographic villages of South Africa.
THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE GROUPS
Amharic (which is spoken by about 6 million people)
pers.) is distributed in the northern and middle parts of Ethiopia, in the regions of Amhara, Gojjam, Shoa, where the Amharic population itself lives. It is accepted throughout the country as the state language of Ethiopia, in which office work is carried out, government decrees, newspapers, etc. are printed. It is also known in Eritrea, British and Italian Somali, and Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.
Classification of the languages of Africa
3) family of Bantu languages;
4) Khoisan group of languages;
5) Malagash language.
About 47 million people live in South Africa. The population is very heterogeneous along racial, national, linguistic, cultural and religious lines. The entire ethnically diverse population of South Africa - the result of a complex history of the formation of the country's population - is officially divided into 4 groups: Africans, whites, mulattos and Asians. The main part, of course, are the indigenous people of the African continent - black Africans. There are more than 70% of them, white Afrikaners - about 10%, mulattos or, as they are called here, colored - 9%, and Indians and Asians - 2.5%.
Asians in South Africa are represented mainly by Indians, descendants of workers brought here in the 19th century to work on sugar plantations. This group is called natal.
Mulattos or "colored" in South Africa are called people of mixed races descended from slaves brought from eastern and central Africa, Aborigines of Africa, whites with an admixture of Malays, Indians and other Asians. Most "colored" people speak Afrikaans.
The white population consists of descendants of colonial immigrants: Dutch, Germans, French, Huguenots and English. In terms of cultural and linguistic factors, they are divided into Afrikaners, former Boers, and now Dutch (they live here for the tenth generation and speak Afrikaans) and Anglo-Africans, descendants of British colonists.
And finally, the most numerous - black residents are represented by various ethnic groups, tribes and nationalities. The largest ethnic groups: Zulu (Natal province and environs), Xhosa (south of the country), Sotho (Lesotho state inside South Africa), Pedi, Venda, Tswana, Tsonga, Swazi, Ndbele and others. They all speak Bantu languages. Also in South Africa, the oldest indigenous inhabitants of the country, the Hottentots and Bushmen, live in separate settlements, who have preserved their unique exotic culture and way of life.
Almost every tribe lives apart. Their living conditions, way of life, culture, religion, traditions, customs - a real exotic that you will not see anywhere else.
You can get acquainted with it on special tours of the ethnographic villages of South Africa.
For the most a large number of state languages - eleven - South Africa is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The list of official languages includes the languages of various nations and ethnic groups inhabiting the country: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Pedi, Sotho, Tswana, Swazi, Venda, Tsonga. Most black Africans speak their own languages. The most widely spoken language is Zulu. The second most popular language is Xhosa. In parallel with this, the majority of the population of all races speaks English language. The descendants of the Dutch and mulattoes speak Afrikaans, a mixture of Old Dutch (medieval) language with the local dialect.
Almost 200 million people of modern Africa speak many languages and dialects. Some of them have now become the languages of numerous peoples and emerging nations, but the linguistic map of Africa is still full of the names of many languages. Bourgeois linguists in their studies hush up the stormy and irresistible process of creating large languages, often trying, on the contrary, to emphasize the existence of a huge number of languages, tribes, painting an incorrect picture of hopeless backwardness. In Sudan alone, they argue, there are between 700 and 800 languages. Linguists, as it were, compete in the number of individual language units they have established. So, for example, a prominent linguist and specialist in African languages, the German Meinhof in 1910, numbered 182 Bantu languages.
Somewhat later, in 1919-1922, the Englishman Johnston brought their number to 226. In 1948, the Belgian Van Bulk surpassed both of them, arguing that in the Belgian Congo alone there are 518 different Bantu languages, not counting dialects.
The constant references to a huge number of languages serve a twofold purpose. First, they must give the impression of the ethnic chaos and disorder that exists in the colonial world, a disorder that is contained only by the establishment in the colonies of Pax Britannica or Paix Franqaise, as English and French colonial figures are fond of expressing it. Secondly, they are pursuing the task of obscuring and hiding the process of formation of large nationalities going on in the colonies, the process of consolidating nations. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully analyze what is hidden behind the external diversity and endless diversity of the linguistic map of Africa.
The reasoning of the majority of foreign linguists is characterized by the separation of the history of the language from the history of the development of society. But language is one of the social phenomena, I. V. Stalin points out. “There is no language outside of society. Therefore, the language and the laws of its development can be understood only if it is studied in close connection with the history of society, with the history of the people to whom the studied language belongs and which is the creator and bearer of this language.
At the early stages of the development of society, there were tribal languages that united all members of the clan. It is possible that the most backward peoples of Africa, such as the Pygmies or the Bushmen, several centuries ago lived in separate clans, each of which had its own language. At present, there are no more ancestral languages in Africa.
The pygmies speak the languages of their neighbors, i.e. the Bantu languages or the Sudanese languages. social order Bushmen, driven into the Kalahari desert, has changed so much that, on the basis of their state of the art it is impossible to draw any conclusions. Formerly independent clans and tribes of the Bushmen mixed up, and most of them lost their languages.
With the exception of the Bushmen and Pygmies, all other groups of the population have long lived in a tribal system.
In many areas of Africa, even before the advent of Europeans, states existed and the process of the formation of nationalities began, while the once independent tribes were split up and dispersed, some languages replaced others, and some of them became the languages of state associations; local dialects were ground into a single language. However, nowhere in Africa, with the exception of its northern coast, the process of development of society has not reached the formation of a nation, therefore, nowhere have national languages been created; but many peoples of Africa have long outlived primitive communal relations with their tribal system, and now in Africa there are many millions of peoples united by a common language. All this must be borne in mind when addressing the consideration of linguistic problems in Africa.
In Nigeria, with its more than 24 million people, according to some sources, there are almost one and a half hundred different languages. It does not at all follow from this that each of them is spoken by approximately 150 or 200 thousand people. In fact, the languages of this 24 million population are distributed as follows: Hausa is spoken by about 8 million, Yoruba by about 4 million, Ibo by 4 million people, that is, almost four-fifths of the total population speaks in three languages; they are followed by languages: Fulbe, which is spoken by more than 2 million, and Kanuri (in Bornu) - 1200 thousand. Thus, less than 5 million people speak all other languages of Nigeria.
In French West Africa, in the basin of the Upper Niger and Senegal, a large part (about 3 million) of the population speaks the Mandingo language; next in importance: the Fulbe language (a little less than 2 million people) and the language of mine (about 2 million people). These three languages are the most important in French West Africa, spoken by 42% of its total population.
The same is true in other colonies. In the Belgian Congo, for example, with a population of more than 11 million people, about 3.5 million speak the Luba language, more than 2 million speak the Rwanda language, up to 1.5 million speak the Rundi language, and up to 1.5 million speak the Congo language. up to 1 million people, i.e. these languages are spoken by approximately 75-80% of the total population of the country. On the territory of Ruanda-Urundi, the entire population actually speaks the same language, since the languages of Rwanda and Rundi are nothing more than dialects of one language. The Umbundu and Kimbundu (Andongo) languages are spoken by about 60% of the total population of Angola.
THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE GROUPS
Of particular importance, in terms of their prevalence, are the following languages *
Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the entire northern part of Africa. The number of Arabic speakers is determined, according to 1944 data, at 37,585 thousand. Sudan, mainly in their northern parts. It is distributed in the north of French Equatorial Africa and in some areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia, in Northern Nigeria. In addition, on the east coast of Africa, from Zanzibar all the way to Suez, some segments of the urban population speak Arabic. Arabic language- the main language of the population of the island of Socotra.
In second place, both in terms of the number of speakers and its importance, is the Hausa language. This language is most common among the population of Northern Nigeria and the adjacent areas of French Sudan and Southern Nigeria. In addition, the Hausa language is spoken in the northern part of Dahomey, in Togo, on the Gold Coast and partly on the Coast Ivory, in Cameroon, in French Equatorial Africa and in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Hausa groups are found in Algeria, Libya, Fezzan and along the banks of the Nile. Thus, the area of distribution of the Hausa language covers almost all the interior regions of Sudan. It is difficult to ascertain the exact number of Hausa speakers. According to 1944 data, it reaches 9200 thousand. According to other sources, the number of Hausa speakers is from 10 to 15 million.
In third place among all the languages of Africa is the Swahili language (Ki-Swahili). It is generally believed that the total number of speakers of it is approximately as large as that of Hausa speakers, and ranges from 10 to 15 million. According to the guide to the languages of Africa, compiled in 1944 by McDougald, 7860 thousand people speak Swahili. The Swahili language was originally used by the coastal population of East Africa, it was distributed from the city of Lamu in the north to the Portuguese possessions in southern East Africa. It is currently considered official language four British colonies of East Africa: Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya and Nyasaland. It is also distributed in Italian Somalia, in Ruanda-Urundi, in the northeastern parts of Northern Rhodesia, in Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia. Before the Second World War, this language also spread in the eastern part of the Belgian Congo, east of Stanleyville, along the river. Lualaba and in Elizabethville County. It is also spoken by a part! coastal population northwestern Madagascar.
The Rwanda language (actually the Uru-Nya-Rwanda language) is common in the Belgian colony of Ruanda-Urundi and in the northwestern part of Tanganyika. The total number of speakers of it reaches 5 million. Kirundi, which is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, is considered a separate language, is nothing more than its dialect.
For French Western Sudan great importance has a Mandingo language. It is divided into three main dialects: Malinke, Bambara and Diula. Mandingo dialects are spoken by most of the surrounding tribes as a second language. The Mandingo language is the language of the French colonial troops. The total number of speakers of Mandingo dialects is estimated at about 5 million.
Classification of the languages of Africa
There is not yet a well-established classification of all African languages. This is explained primarily by the fact that the languages of many regions of Africa have been little studied. The best studied are the Semitic-Hamitic languages, which are spoken by the population of all North and Northeast Africa, and the Bantu languages, common throughout southern Africa, south of Sudan - up to Natal. The languages of the peoples of the upper Nile constitute a special group of Nilotic languages. As for the languages of the Sudan, many questions of their linguistic classification are not yet completely clear. Special groups are made up of the languages of the Guinean coast, the languages of my group, the Mandingo languages, and some others. It is possible that further research will be able to establish the relationship of all these groups to each other. However, it is still more cautious to consider them separately, as independent groups.
The languages of Eastern Sudan are the least studied, and it is still premature to talk about their classification.
At the beginning of the XX century. in African studies, the theory of a three-term division of all African languages into Hamitic, Sudanese and Bantu dominated. It was based on a typological classification of languages: their division into amorphous, agglutinative and inflectional types. The languages of Sudan were considered the oldest type of African languages, monosyllabic, having musical tones, an amorphous type, "having no service particles." They were compared with Chinese and declared primitive. The Sudanese languages were considered the languages of the aboriginal population of Africa. The Hamitic languages, which do not have musical tones, but have a tonic accent and belong to the inflectional type, were considered the languages of the peoples who came to Africa from Asia. The German Africanist Meinhof believed that from the mixing of Hamitic languages with Sudanese, Bantu languages arose, agglutinative in their type, having grammatical classes of nouns.
His views were based on racist concepts about light-skinned, highly cultured Hamites and Negroes incapable of development. The Bantu Negroes, according to this theory, the product of mixing with the Hamites, were considered to be superior to their Sudanese counterparts.
Scientific evidence has completely refuted this theory. The unity of the Sudanese languages turned out to be imaginary: in reality, their different groups are very different from one another, very complex, and many are related to the Bantu languages.
The main groups of African languages are as follows:
1) the Semitic-Hamitic group of families of related languages;
2) Sudanese languages: Guinean, Mande, Bantoid (West-Bantoid, or Atlantic, Central-Bantoid, or Mosi-Grusi, and East Bantoid), Kanuri, Kordofan, Nilotic groups; in addition, the unclassified languages of Central Sudan;
3) family of Bantu languages;
4) Khoisan group of languages;
5) Malagash language.
Languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group
The languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group, taken as a whole, represent a certain unity. Among them, the Semitic languages constitute a special family of languages. All of them are characterized by the so-called three-literal root, or, which is the same, the three-consonant stem of the verb (it is sometimes inaccurately called the three-letter stem of the verb root). For all Semitic languages, internal inflection is typical, that is, the change of the verb in moods, types, tenses, voices and persons is carried out by changing the vowels inside the remaining unchanged (or almost unchanged) verb stem. All Semitic languages have a common vocabulary for all of them. These features are perhaps the most typical and characterize all the Semitic languages.
Unlike the Semitic languages, another part of the languages of this group, sometimes called Hamitic, does not represent a unity. There are no features that characterize the languages of the Hamitic group as a whole, which would be inherent only to it and distinguish it from the Semitic.
Just as the Indo-European languages are a group of families of related languages, which includes Slavic, Germanic, Romance and other languages, so the Semitic-Hamitic languages \u200b\u200bare united by Semitic, Cushitic and Berber, the ancient Egyptian language and the Hausa-Kotoko group of languages.
The Hottentot languages are sometimes also classified as Hamitic on the grounds that they have a grammatical gender. This is not true; as we shall see later, grammatical gender is also found in the central group of Bushman languages. The study of the grammatical structure and vocabulary of the Hottentot and Bushman languages showed that they are related to each other and should be combined into one group, which is usually called Khoisan.
All Semitic-Hamitic languages in general are large group inflectional languages, which has well-known features that are characteristic of this entire group.
On the African mainland, these include:
1) Semitic languages of Ethiopia; 2) the Cushitic family of languages; 3) ancient Egyptian and Coptic languages; 4) the Berber family of languages; 5) the Hausa language and languages close to it.
Almost 200 million people of modern Africa speak many languages and dialects. Some of them have now become the languages of numerous peoples and emerging nations, but the linguistic map of Africa is still full of the names of many languages. Bourgeois linguists in their studies hush up the stormy and irresistible process of creating large languages, often trying, on the contrary, to emphasize the existence of a huge number of languages, tribes, painting an incorrect picture of hopeless backwardness. In Sudan alone, they argue, there are between 700 and 800 languages. Linguists, as it were, compete in the number of individual language units they have established. So, for example, a prominent linguist and specialist in African languages, the German Meinhof in 1910, numbered 182 Bantu languages.
Somewhat later, in 1919-1922, the Englishman Johnston brought their number to 226. In 1948, the Belgian Van Bulk surpassed both of them, arguing that in the Belgian Congo alone there are 518 different Bantu languages, not counting dialects.
The constant references to a huge number of languages serve a twofold purpose. First, they must give the impression of the ethnic chaos and disorder that exists in the colonial world, a disorder that is contained only by the establishment in the colonies of Pax Britannica or Paix Franqaise, as English and French colonial figures are fond of expressing it. Secondly, they are pursuing the task of obscuring and hiding the process of formation of large nationalities going on in the colonies, the process of consolidating nations. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully analyze what is hidden behind the external diversity and endless diversity of the linguistic map of Africa.
The reasoning of the majority of foreign linguists is characterized by the separation of the history of the language from the history of the development of society. But language is one of the social phenomena, I. V. Stalin points out. “There is no language outside of society. Therefore, the language and the laws of its development can be understood only if it is studied in close connection with the history of society, with the history of the people to whom the studied language belongs and which is the creator and bearer of this language.
At the early stages of the development of society, there were tribal languages that united all members of the clan. It is possible that the most backward peoples of Africa, such as the Pygmies or the Bushmen, several centuries ago lived in separate clans, each of which had its own language. At present, there are no more ancestral languages in Africa.
The pygmies speak the languages of their neighbors, i.e. the Bantu languages or the Sudanese languages. The social structure of the Bushmen, driven into the Kalahari Desert, has changed so much that it is impossible to draw any conclusions based on their current state. Formerly independent clans and tribes of the Bushmen mixed up, and most of them lost their languages.
With the exception of the Bushmen and Pygmies, all other groups of the population have long lived in a tribal system. In many areas of Africa, even before the advent of Europeans, states existed and the process of the formation of nationalities began, while the once independent tribes were split up and dispersed, some languages replaced others, and some of them became the languages of state associations; local dialects were ground into a single language. However, nowhere in Africa, with the exception of its northern coast, the process of development of society has not reached the formation of a nation, therefore, nowhere have national languages been created; but many peoples of Africa have long outlived primitive communal relations with their tribal system, and now in Africa there are many millions of peoples united by a common language. All this must be borne in mind when addressing the consideration of linguistic problems in Africa.
In Nigeria, with its more than 24 million people, according to some sources, there are almost one and a half hundred different languages. It does not at all follow from this that each of them is spoken by approximately 150 or 200 thousand people. In fact, the languages of this 24 million population are distributed as follows: Hausa is spoken by about 8 million, Yoruba by about 4 million, Ibo by 4 million people, that is, almost four-fifths of the total population speaks in three languages; they are followed by languages: Fulbe, which is spoken by more than 2 million, and Kanuri (in Bornu) - 1200 thousand. Thus, less than 5 million people speak all other languages of Nigeria.
In French West Africa, in the basin of the Upper Niger and Senegal, a large part (about 3 million) of the population speaks the Mandingo language; next in importance: the Fulbe language (a little less than 2 million people) and the language of mine (about 2 million people). These three languages are the most important in French West Africa, spoken by 42% of its total population.
The same is true in other colonies. In the Belgian Congo, for example, with a population of more than 11 million people, about 3.5 million speak the Luba language, more than 2 million speak the Rwanda language, up to 1.5 million speak the Rundi language, and up to 1.5 million speak the Congo language. up to 1 million people, i.e. these languages are spoken by approximately 75-80% of the total population of the country. On the territory of Ruanda-Urundi, the entire population actually speaks the same language, since the languages of Rwanda and Rundi are nothing more than dialects of one language. The Umbundu and Kimbundu (Andongo) languages are spoken by about 60% of the total population of Angola.
THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE GROUPS
Of particular importance, in terms of their prevalence, are the following languages *
Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the entire northern part of Africa. The number of Arabic speakers is determined, according to 1944 data, at 37,585 thousand. Sudan, mainly in their northern parts. It is distributed in the north of French Equatorial Africa and in some areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia, in Northern Nigeria. In addition, on the east coast of Africa, from Zanzibar all the way to Suez, some segments of the urban population speak Arabic. Arabic is the main language of the population of Socotra Island.
In second place, both in terms of the number of speakers and its importance, is the Hausa language. This language is most common among the population of Northern Nigeria and the adjacent areas of French Sudan and Southern Nigeria. In addition, the Hausa language is spoken in the northern part of Dahomey, in Togo, on the Gold Coast and partly on the Ivory Coast, in Cameroon, in French Equatorial Africa and in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Hausa groups are found in Algeria, Libya, Fezzan and along the banks of the Nile. Thus, the area of distribution of the Hausa language covers almost all the interior regions of Sudan. It is difficult to ascertain the exact number of Hausa speakers. According to 1944 data, it reaches 9200 thousand. According to other sources, the number of Hausa speakers is from 10 to 15 million.
In third place among all the languages of Africa is the Swahili language (Ki-Swahili). It is generally believed that the total number of speakers of it is approximately as large as that of Hausa speakers, and ranges from 10 to 15 million. According to the guide to the languages of Africa, compiled in 1944 by McDougald, 7860 thousand people speak Swahili. The Swahili language was originally used by the coastal population of East Africa, it was distributed from the city of Lamu in the north to the Portuguese possessions in southern East Africa. It is currently considered the official language of four English East African colonies: Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya and Nyasaland. It is also distributed in Italian Somalia, in Ruanda-Urundi, in the northeastern parts of Northern Rhodesia, in Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia. Before the Second World War, this language also spread in the eastern part of the Belgian Congo, east of Stanleyville, along the river. Lualaba and in Elizabethville County. It is also spoken by a part! coastal population of northwestern Madagascar.
The Amharic language (which is spoken by about 6 million people) is widespread in the northern and middle parts of Ethiopia, in the regions of Amhara, Gojjam, Shoa, where the Amharic population itself lives. It is accepted throughout the country as the state language of Ethiopia, in which office work is carried out, government decrees, newspapers, etc. are printed. It is also known in Eritrea, British and Italian Somali, and Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.
The Rwanda language (actually the Uru-Nya-Rwanda language) is common in the Belgian colony of Ruanda-Urundi and in the northwestern part of Tanganyika. The total number of speakers of it reaches 5 million. Kirundi, which is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, is considered a separate language, is nothing more than its dialect.
For French Western Sudan, the Mandingo language is of great importance. It is divided into three main dialects: Malinke, Bambara and Diula. Mandingo dialects are spoken by most of the surrounding tribes as a second language. The Mandingo language is the language of the French colonial troops. The total number of speakers of Mandingo dialects is estimated at about 5 million.
Classification of the languages of Africa
There is not yet a well-established classification of all African languages. This is explained primarily by the fact that the languages of many regions of Africa have been little studied. The best studied are the Semitic-Hamitic languages, which are spoken by the population of all North and Northeast Africa, and the Bantu languages, common throughout southern Africa, south of Sudan - up to Natal. The languages of the peoples of the upper Nile constitute a special group of Nilotic languages. As for the languages of the Sudan, many questions of their linguistic classification are not yet completely clear. Special groups are made up of the languages of the Guinean coast, the languages of my group, the Mandingo languages, and some others. It is possible that further research will be able to establish the relationship of all these groups to each other. However, it is still more cautious to consider them separately, as independent groups.
The languages of Eastern Sudan are the least studied, and it is still premature to talk about their classification.
At the beginning of the XX century. in African studies, the theory of a three-term division of all African languages into Hamitic, Sudanese and Bantu dominated. It was based on a typological classification of languages: their division into amorphous, agglutinative and inflectional types. The languages of Sudan were considered the oldest type of African languages, monosyllabic, having musical tones, an amorphous type, "having no service particles." They were compared with the Chinese language and declared primitive. The Sudanese languages were considered the languages of the aboriginal population of Africa. The Hamitic languages, which do not have musical tones, but have a tonic accent and belong to the inflectional type, were considered the languages of the peoples who came to Africa from Asia. The German Africanist Meinhof believed that from the mixing of Hamitic languages with Sudanese, Bantu languages arose, agglutinative in their type, having grammatical classes of nouns.
His views were based on racist concepts about light-skinned, highly cultured Hamites and Negroes incapable of development. The Bantu Negroes, according to this theory, the product of mixing with the Hamites, were considered to be superior to their Sudanese counterparts.
Scientific evidence has completely refuted this theory. The unity of the Sudanese languages turned out to be imaginary: in reality, their different groups are very different from one another, very complex, and many are related to the Bantu languages.
The main groups of African languages are as follows:
1) the Semitic-Hamitic group of families of related languages;
2) Sudanese languages: Guinean, Mande, Bantoid (West-Bantoid, or Atlantic, Central-Bantoid, or Mosi-Grusi, and East Bantoid), Kanuri, Kordofan, Nilotic groups; in addition, the unclassified languages of Central Sudan;
3) family of Bantu languages;
4) Khoisan group of languages;
5) Malagash language.
Languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group
The languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group, taken as a whole, represent a certain unity. Among them, the Semitic languages constitute a special family of languages. All of them are characterized by the so-called three-literal root, or, which is the same, the three-consonant stem of the verb (it is sometimes inaccurately called the three-letter stem of the verb root). For all Semitic languages, internal inflection is typical, i.e.
changing the verb in moods, types, tenses, voices and persons is done by changing the vowels inside the remaining unchanged (or almost unchanged) verb stem. All Semitic languages have a common vocabulary for all of them. These features are perhaps the most typical and characterize all the Semitic languages.
Unlike the Semitic languages, another part of the languages of this group, sometimes called Hamitic, does not represent a unity. There are no features that characterize the languages of the Hamitic group as a whole, which would be inherent only to it and distinguish it from the Semitic.
Just as the Indo-European languages are a group of families of related languages, which includes Slavic, Germanic, Romance and other languages, so the Semitic-Hamitic languages \u200b\u200bare united by Semitic, Cushitic and Berber, the ancient Egyptian language and the Hausa-Kotoko group of languages.
The Hottentot languages are sometimes also classified as Hamitic on the grounds that they have a grammatical gender. This is not true; as we shall see later, grammatical gender is also found in the central group of Bushman languages. The study of the grammatical structure and vocabulary of the Hottentot and Bushman languages showed that they are related to each other and should be combined into one group, which is usually called Khoisan.
All the Semitic-Hamitic languages as a whole represent a large group of inflectional languages, which has certain features that are characteristic of this entire group.
On the African mainland, these include:
1) Semitic languages of Ethiopia; 2) the Cushitic family of languages; 3) ancient Egyptian and Coptic languages; 4) the Berber family of languages; 5) the Hausa language and languages close to it.
-rundi
In general, the most well-known languages include:
The most controversial is the Khoisan hypothesis, according to which all non-Bantu languages of southern Africa are combined into one macrofamily, they live in the states: Namibia (62.1%), Botswana (19.6%), Tanzania (13.4%), Angola ( 2.6%), South Africa (1%), Zimbabwe. Them common feature is the presence of special clicking consonants. On the same basis, two isolated languages \u200b\u200bfrom east Africa are added to the Khoisan languages: Sandawe and Hadza. The Khoisan languages are very poorly understood, with about half of the approximately 30 languages already extinct, with most of the rest on the brink of extinction. All this greatly complicates their study. In the mid-1980s, there were 306,000 people on the African continent belonging to this linguistic macrofamily, which accounted for 0.06% of the total population of Hottentot Africa - 110,000 people. (36%), mountain Damara - 80 (26%), Bushmen - 75 (24.5%) and Sandawe - 40 (13%). Previously, according to the ethnographic principle, these languages were divided into Bushmen and Hottentot. The currently known Khoisan languages are divided into 2 families, the relationship between which is quite likely, and 3 isolated languages, which may not be related to the others:
Another 9 languages of Africa are considered unclassified: the ancient Meroitic language and the living ones:
For many, the reason is the lack of reliable data. All of these languages are extinct or on the verge of extinction, so there is little hope for the emergence of new data necessary to refine their classification.
Pygmies, a special sub-racial and group of Negroid African peoples, who until recently retained remnants of the Mesolithic in everyday life, currently speak the languages or dialects of the languages \u200b\u200bof the neighboring peoples, in relation to which they are at a lower social level. Nevertheless, there is a hypothesis among linguists about the existence of Pygmy languages in the prehistoric era, which disappeared later in the course of assimilation, which can be confirmed by the presence in Pygmy dialects of substrate vocabulary associated with hunting and gathering (for example, forest honey) and inexplicable from the historical reconstruction of these languages. .
Finally, two families appeared in Africa in historical time.
From Indo-European family the first was the ancient Greek language of the colonies in Egypt and Libya in 1 thousand BC. e. The Greek community is still preserved in Egypt. After the annexation of Carthage to Rome, the Latin language spread along the Maghreb coast, which began to develop into an independent Romance language, which was supplanted by Arabic by the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. In -XVII centuries. in North Africa, another Romance language appeared, Sephardic, which was spoken by Jews who fled from Spain and Portugal. From the 17th century, the development of Africa by European powers began and the spread of European languages \u200b\u200b- Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, later French, German and English. In many places, pidgins and creoles developed from these languages. However, only on some islands and in southern Africa (Afrikaans) speakers of Indo-European languages now occupy compact territories. In the mid-1980s, there were 11.48 million people on the African continent belonging to the Indo-European language macrofamily, which accounted for 2.22% of the total population of Africa. The largest peoples of this macrofamily are Afrikaners, or Boers - 2.83 million people. (25%), mestizos - 2.75 (24%), Anglo-Africans - 1.61 (14%) and Indo-Pakistani - 1.17 (10%). Most of the representatives of African Indo-Europeans settled in South Africa (71%), Zimbabwe (1.4%), Kenya (1.2%), Tanzania (1.1%), Namibia (0.7%).
The carriers of one Austronesian languages, related to the Kalimantan languages, began to settle in Madagascar from the end of 1 thousand BC. e., and now its entire population speaks the Malagasy language. In the mid-1980s, there were 9.48 million people in Africa belonging to the Austronesian language macrofamily, which accounted for 1.8% of the total population of Africa. The largest peoples of this macrofamily are the Malagasy - 9.31 million people. (98.2%). Most of the representatives of African Austronesians settled in Madagascar (98.6%).
The language map of the Black Continent looks colorful and bright, like the plumage of an African kingfisher. Two thousand different dialects are spoken here - this is a third of all the languages of the world known today. Apart from other mysteries, the number of African languages itself remains a matter of scientific debate, in large part because linguistics has not yet given an unequivocal answer to the question of where the border between language and dialect lies. In Africa, as in other continents, this leads both concepts to play a political role. Often, speakers of two varieties of a language understand each other perfectly (for example, the inhabitants of Rwanda and Burundi), but prefer to talk about the independence of their languages from each other.
Most often, languages are similar to each other in cases where they developed from a single ancestor language relatively recently. Around the same time that the ancestors of the British, Germans and Danes went their separate ways Western Europe(this happened about two thousand years ago), in Africa there was a disintegration of a single community of peoples of the Bantu family. Her descendants settled over a vast area south of the equator, but to this day they understand each other quite well - so much so that in the 15th-16th centuries. Portuguese navigators, skirting Africa, hired translators for themselves in Angola, on the west coast, and successfully used their help in Mozambique, on the opposite coast of the continent. Some scholars jokingly speak of the "five hundred dialects" of the Bantu.
THE WORD BA-NTU IN ALMOST ALL THE LANGUAGES OF THE BANTU GROUP DESIGNATES "PEOPLE", SO A MORE LOGICAL GROUP NAME CANNOT BE FOUND.
However, the unity of the Bantu languages is a unique example of closeness between the languages of a large area. In West Africa, by contrast, the density and diversity of languages is so great that their speakers often do not understand those who live in the neighborhood. In Cameroon, Nigeria, Sudan, there are areas where each village uses its own language, and this striping has been going on here for many centuries. It happens that the languages of neighboring villages are similar, and scientists manage to trace their common origin. Residents themselves often believe that their distant relatives live “in that village over the hill”, and they can even tell interesting legends about when and for what reason their ancestors diverged. different sides that same hill. But it happens that the languages of neighboring settlements are as different as Russian and Swahili.
Language families and the largest languages of Africa
Of course, there are also major languages in Africa that are used by millions and tens of millions of people. But, unlike Europe or Asia, there are very few of them. This is, of course, due to the fact that in most of the continent for a long time there were no large states uniting their subjects by a single language norm, nor a literary tradition. The spread of languages was mainly due to the development of trade. This is how the Swahili language gained popularity in East Africa. Today, this "trade language" is used in 14 countries, it is spoken by at least 30 million people.
Swahili women gather for a village celebration, Zanzibar
Hausa (34 million people) remains the largest language in western Africa - it also once spread as a result of the trade and political expansion of the people of the same name, who founded several influential city-states in Northern Nigeria. Among the major languages are Shona and Zulu in South Africa(10 million people each), Yoruba, Fula and Igbo in the west of the continent (respectively 28, 25 and 24 million), Oromo and Amharic in Ethiopia (both about 25 million people each), Somalia with 15 million speakers (guess which country) and several others. Well, in the north of the continent, the Arabic language reigns supreme, in various dialects of which at least 150 million people speak since childhood.
And yet, the number of languages that more than a million people would know from birth on the entire vast continent falls short of fifty. All of them once began their history as the languages of small peoples or tribal associations that spread their influence through trade and conquest.
Almost 200 million people of modern Africa speak many languages and dialects. Some of them have now become the languages of numerous peoples and emerging nations, but the linguistic map of Africa is still full of the names of many languages. Bourgeois linguists in their studies hush up the stormy and irresistible process of creating large languages, often trying, on the contrary, to emphasize the existence of a huge number of languages, tribes, painting an incorrect picture of hopeless backwardness. In Sudan alone, they argue, there are between 700 and 800 languages. Linguists, as it were, compete in the number of individual language units they have established. So, for example, a prominent linguist and specialist in African languages, the German Meinhof in 1910, numbered 182 Bantu languages.
Somewhat later, in 1919-1922, the Englishman Johnston brought their number to 226. In 1948, the Belgian Van Bulk surpassed both of them, arguing that in the Belgian Congo alone there are 518 different Bantu languages, not counting dialects.
The constant references to a huge number of languages serve a twofold purpose. First, they must give the impression of the ethnic chaos and disorder that exists in the colonial world, a disorder that is contained only by the establishment in the colonies of Pax Britannica or Paix Franqaise, as English and French colonial leaders are fond of expressing themselves. Secondly, they are pursuing the task of obscuring and hiding the process of formation of large nationalities going on in the colonies, the process of consolidating nations. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully analyze what is hidden behind the external diversity and endless diversity of the linguistic map of Africa.
The reasoning of the majority of foreign linguists is characterized by the separation of the history of the language from the history of the development of society. But language is one of the social phenomena, I. V. Stalin points out. “There is no language outside of society. Therefore, the language and the laws of its development can be understood only if it is studied in close connection with the history of society, with the history of the people to whom the studied language belongs and which is the creator and bearer of this language.
At the early stages of the development of society, there were tribal languages that united all members of the clan. It is possible that the most backward peoples of Africa, such as the Pygmies or the Bushmen, several centuries ago lived in separate clans, each of which had its own language. At present, there are no more ancestral languages in Africa.
The pygmies speak the languages of their neighbors, i.e. the Bantu languages or the Sudanese languages. The social structure of the Bushmen, driven into the Kalahari Desert, has changed so much that it is impossible to draw any conclusions based on their current state. Formerly independent clans and tribes of the Bushmen mixed up, and most of them lost their languages.
With the exception of the Bushmen and Pygmies, all other groups of the population have long lived in a tribal system. In many areas of Africa, even before the advent of Europeans, states existed and the process of the formation of nationalities began, while the once independent tribes were split up and dispersed, some languages replaced others, and some of them became the languages of state associations; local dialects were ground into a single language. However, nowhere in Africa, with the exception of its northern coast, the process of development of society has not reached the formation of a nation, therefore, nowhere have national languages been created; but many peoples of Africa have long outlived primitive communal relations with their tribal system, and now in Africa there are many millions of peoples united by a common language. All this must be borne in mind when addressing the consideration of linguistic problems in Africa.
In Nigeria, with its more than 24 million people, according to some sources, there are almost one and a half hundred different languages. It does not at all follow from this that each of them is spoken by approximately 150 or 200 thousand people. In fact, the languages of this 24 million population are distributed as follows: Hausa is spoken by about 8 million, Yoruba by about 4 million, Ibo by 4 million people, that is, almost four-fifths of the total population speaks in three languages; they are followed by languages: Fulbe, which is spoken by more than 2 million, and Kanuri (in Bornu) - 1200 thousand. Thus, less than 5 million people speak all other languages of Nigeria.
In French West Africa, in the basin of the Upper Niger and Senegal, a large part (about 3 million) of the population speaks the Mandingo language; next in importance: the Fulbe language (a little less than 2 million people) and the language of mine (about 2 million people). These three languages are the most important in French West Africa, spoken by 42% of its total population.
The same is true in other colonies. In the Belgian Congo, for example, with a population of more than 11 million people, about 3.5 million speak the Luba language, more than 2 million speak the Rwanda language, up to 1.5 million speak the Rundi language, and up to 1.5 million speak the Congo language. up to 1 million people, i.e. these languages are spoken by approximately 75-80% of the total population of the country. On the territory of Ruanda-Urundi, the entire population actually speaks the same language, since the languages of Rwanda and Rundi are nothing more than dialects of one language. The Umbundu and Kimbundu (Andongo) languages are spoken by about 60% of the total population of Angola.
THE MOST IMPORTANT LANGUAGE GROUPS
Of particular importance, in terms of their prevalence, are the following languages *
Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the entire northern part of Africa. The number of Arabic speakers is determined, according to 1944 data, at 37,585 thousand. Sudan, mainly in their northern parts. It is distributed in the north of French Equatorial Africa and in some areas of Eritrea and Ethiopia, in Northern Nigeria. In addition, on the east coast of Africa, from Zanzibar all the way to Suez, some segments of the urban population speak Arabic. Arabic is the main language of the population of Socotra Island.
In second place, both in terms of the number of speakers and its importance, is the Hausa language. This language is most common among the population of Northern Nigeria and the adjacent areas of French Sudan and Southern Nigeria. In addition, the Hausa language is spoken in the northern part of Dahomey, in Togo, on the Gold Coast and partly on the Ivory Coast, in Cameroon, in French Equatorial Africa and in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Hausa groups are found in Algeria, Libya, Fezzan and along the banks of the Nile. Thus, the area of distribution of the Hausa language covers almost all the interior regions of Sudan. It is difficult to ascertain the exact number of Hausa speakers. According to 1944 data, it reaches 9200 thousand. According to other sources, the number of Hausa speakers is from 10 to 15 million.
In third place among all the languages of Africa is the Swahili language (Ki-Swahili). It is generally believed that the total number of speakers of it is approximately as large as that of Hausa speakers, and ranges from 10 to 15 million. According to the guide to the languages of Africa, compiled in 1944 by McDougald, 7860 thousand people speak Swahili. The Swahili language was originally used by the coastal population of East Africa, it was distributed from the city of Lamu in the north to the Portuguese possessions in southern East Africa. It is currently considered the official language of four English East African colonies: Uganda, Tanganyika, Kenya and Nyasaland. It is also distributed in Italian Somalia, in Ruanda-Urundi, in the northeastern parts of Northern Rhodesia, in Mozambique and Southern Rhodesia. Before the Second World War, this language also spread in the eastern part of the Belgian Congo, east of Stanleyville, along the river. Lualaba and in Elizabethville County. It is also spoken by a part! coastal population of northwestern Madagascar.
The Amharic language (which is spoken by about 6 million people) is widespread in the northern and middle parts of Ethiopia, in the regions of Amhara, Gojjam, Shoa, where the Amharic population itself lives. It is accepted throughout the country as the state language of Ethiopia, in which office work is carried out, government decrees, newspapers, etc. are printed. It is also known in Eritrea, British and Italian Somali, and Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.
The Rwanda language (actually the Uru-Nya-Rwanda language) is common in the Belgian colony of Ruanda-Urundi and in the northwestern part of Tanganyika. The total number of speakers of it reaches 5 million. Kirundi, which is spoken by more than 1.5 million people, is considered a separate language, is nothing more than its dialect.
For French Western Sudan, the Mandingo language is of great importance. It is divided into three main dialects: Malinke, Bambara and Diula. Mandingo dialects are spoken by most of the surrounding tribes as a second language. The Mandingo language is the language of the French colonial troops. The total number of speakers of Mandingo dialects is estimated at about 5 million.
Classification of the languages of Africa
There is not yet a well-established classification of all African languages. This is explained primarily by the fact that the languages of many regions of Africa have been little studied. The best studied are the Semitic-Hamitic languages, which are spoken by the population of all North and Northeast Africa, and the Bantu languages, common throughout southern Africa, south of Sudan - up to Natal. The languages of the peoples of the upper Nile constitute a special group of Nilotic languages. As for the languages of the Sudan, many questions of their linguistic classification are not yet completely clear. Special groups are made up of the languages of the Guinean coast, the languages of my group, the Mandingo languages, and some others. It is possible that further research will be able to establish the relationship of all these groups to each other. However, it is still more cautious to consider them separately, as independent groups.
The languages of Eastern Sudan are the least studied, and it is still premature to talk about their classification.
At the beginning of the XX century. in African studies, the theory of a three-term division of all African languages into Hamitic, Sudanese and Bantu dominated. It was based on a typological classification of languages: their division into amorphous, agglutinative and inflectional types. The languages of Sudan were considered the oldest type of African languages, monosyllabic, having musical tones, an amorphous type, "having no service particles." They were compared with the Chinese language and declared primitive. The Sudanese languages were considered the languages of the aboriginal population of Africa. The Hamitic languages, which do not have musical tones, but have a tonic accent and belong to the inflectional type, were considered the languages of the peoples who came to Africa from Asia. The German Africanist Meinhof believed that from the mixing of Hamitic languages with Sudanese, Bantu languages arose, agglutinative in their type, having grammatical classes of nouns.
His views were based on racist concepts about light-skinned, highly cultured Hamites and Negroes incapable of development. The Bantu Negroes, according to this theory, the product of mixing with the Hamites, were considered to be superior to their Sudanese counterparts.
Scientific evidence has completely refuted this theory. The unity of the Sudanese languages turned out to be imaginary: in reality, their different groups are very different from one another, very complex, and many are related to the Bantu languages.
The main groups of African languages are as follows:
1) the Semitic-Hamitic group of families of related languages;
2) Sudanese languages: Guinean, Mande, Bantoid (West-Bantoid, or Atlantic, Central-Bantoid, or Mosi-Grusi, and East Bantoid), Kanuri, Kordofan, Nilotic groups; in addition, the unclassified languages of Central Sudan;
3) family of Bantu languages;
4) Khoisan group of languages;
5) Malagash language.
Languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group
The languages of the Semitic-Hamitic group, taken as a whole, represent a certain unity. Among them, the Semitic languages constitute a special family of languages. All of them are characterized by the so-called three-literal root, or, which is the same, the three-consonant stem of the verb (it is sometimes inaccurately called the three-letter stem of the verb root). For all Semitic languages, internal inflection is typical, that is, the change of the verb in moods, types, tenses, voices and persons is carried out by changing the vowels inside the remaining unchanged (or almost unchanged) verb stem. All Semitic languages have a common vocabulary for all of them. These features are perhaps the most typical and characterize all the Semitic languages.
Unlike the Semitic languages, another part of the languages of this group, sometimes called Hamitic, does not represent a unity. There are no features that characterize the languages of the Hamitic group as a whole, which would be inherent only to it and distinguish it from the Semitic.
Just as the Indo-European languages are a group of families of related languages, which includes Slavic, Germanic, Romance and other languages, so the Semitic-Hamitic languages \u200b\u200bare united by Semitic, Cushitic and Berber, the ancient Egyptian language and the Hausa-Kotoko group of languages.
The Hottentot languages are sometimes also classified as Hamitic on the grounds that they have a grammatical gender. This is not true; as we shall see later, grammatical gender is also found in the central group of Bushman languages. The study of the grammatical structure and vocabulary of the Hottentot and Bushman languages showed that they are related to each other and should be combined into one group, which is usually called Khoisan.
All the Semitic-Hamitic languages as a whole represent a large group of inflectional languages, which has certain features that are characteristic of this entire group.
On the African mainland, these include:
1) Semitic languages of Ethiopia; 2) the Cushitic family of languages; 3) ancient Egyptian and Coptic languages; 4) the Berber family of languages; 5) the Hausa language and languages close to it.
Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, speaks a great variety of languages. An exact figure cannot be given, since there is no generally accepted method for distinguishing between languages and dialects. However, by any reasonable estimate, there are over 800 different languages in Africa.
Estimates of the number of speakers for most African languages vary widely, due to the use of various ways counting, the widespread use of many of the largest languages as languages of interethnic communication, as well as the extremely high dynamics of demographic processes (rapid population growth in some countries, for example, Nigeria, and intensive migration to cities), leading to rapid obsolescence of statistical data. Some local languages, such as Swahili in East Africa and Hausa in West Africa, were widely used as a lingua franca, i.e. as intermediary languages in the communication of multilingual groups, even before the introduction of European languages, now Zulu, Lingala and some others have been added to their number.
With all the diversity, African languages can be grouped into four big families, having different origins: Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo (formerly known as West Sudanese and also includes Bantu languages), Nilo-Saharan (Sudanese) and the family of click languages (formerly called Bushman and also includes Hottentot and two East African languages).
Although the thesis of the origin of these four families from one source cannot be proved, there are a number of linguistic features common to a large number of African languages and rare or absent outside of Africa, which allows us to consider this continent an independent language area. These features include tones discussed below, nominal classification systems, and verbal derivation. Vocalism is generally simple, with no umlaut or other sound modifications, except for a very common nasalization.
Syllables are usually open, i.e. ending only in vowels (except in most Afroasian languages). Typical initial combinations "nasal consonant + voiced stop", such as mb- and nd-. Common in African languages and rarely found outside Africa are clicking consonants, labiovelar consonants, which are characterized by a double - labial and back-lingual - closure (kp and gb), and implosive occlusions, accompanied not by the expulsion of the air jet from the oral cavity, but by its retraction.
Tonal systems usually include two or three significant registers (pitches), unlike languages such as Chinese, which use contour tones (rising, descending, etc.). Many characteristic semantic idioms are common throughout Africa, for example, the phrase literally meaning "mouth of the house" is used to refer to a door, literally "children of the hand" to refer to fingers, the word meaning "child" is used as a diminutive (diminutive indicator).
Any significant information about African languages, especially widespread in South Africa, became available only in the 19th century, when Europeans penetrated deep into the continent. This led to attempts at a general classification of African languages (R. Lepsius, F. Muller, R. Kast). In the first two decades of the 20th century, mainly due to the efforts of K. Meinhof and D. Westerman (the first is a specialist in Bantu, the second is in the languages of Sudan), a widely used classification was developed, according to which all African languages were divided into five families: Semitic , Hamitic, Sudanese, Bantu and Bushmen.
Approximately in this order, these families were distributed over the territory of the African continent in the direction from north to south. Initially, it was believed that the languages of the first two families were spoken by representatives of the white race (Caucasians), the next two - by the black race (Negroids), and the languages last family- representatives of the Bushmen race. The main disadvantages of this classification were as follows. 1) As Westerman himself has shown, the Bantu languages are combined with a large group of languages of Western Sudan into a single family, in general, not related to the languages of Eastern Sudan. 2) The Semitic group is not independent, it is related to the "Hamitic" languages.
In addition, as M. Cohen and others pointed out, “Hamitic” languages are not at all a separate taxonomic unit within some larger one, but just a traditional designation of all non-Semitic groups. 3) With regard to the various proposals by Meinhof to attribute the status of "Hamitic" to a number of languages (eg Fula, Maasai, Hottentot), almost all of them are now recognized as incorrect. Only the Hausa language, which together with many languages of Chad forms the Chadic group, can be considered "Hamitic" and therefore belongs to the Afroasian family (formerly called Semitic-Hamitic or Hamito-Semitic). This article presents the classification of African languages that arose as a result of these major modifications.
