Language Planning, Standardization And Policy In Africa

A Summary
By Elizabeth.D., Chimdi W. and Beniyam J.

Submitted to Zelealem Leyew (Ph. D)

Jan./2009

Summary on Language planning, standardization and Policy

By

Elizabeth Demissie Beniyam Jembere Chimdi Wakuma

To

Zelealem Leyew (PhD)

Addis Ababa University Institute of Language Studies African Languages and Applied Linguistics Graduate

program
Language Planning and Standardization Course (ALAL 601)

Addis Ababa January, 2009

Contents
1. Language Planning and Standardization in Africa 1.1. Standardization of African Languages Orthography 1.2. Transborder Languages Standardization in Africa 1.3.Language Planning Models and Its Application in Africa 2. Language Policies of African Countries 2.1. Typologies of Language Situations and Policies in Africa 2.1.1. Typology of Language Situation 2.1.2. Typologies of Current Language Policies 2.2. Past and present language policies in Africa 2.3. African Language Policy Formulation advances 2.4. Guideline for African language policy formulation 2.5. Selected African Countries Language policy Profile 2.6. Sign Language in African language policy Bibliography

1. Language Planning and Standardization in Africa

According to Wolff (2000:332) one of the major concerns of language planning is language standardization, especially in Africa. Language standardization is a means, in language development, selection and promotion of variants with in a language. Similarly, Nyombe (2001) said the issue of standardization in Africa is a question of development of African languages as modern vehicles of education, administration and literacy expansion. He describe, by referring Abdulaziz (1991), the development of indigenous African languages is vital for the future material and political development of the continent. He reason out, to be advanced politically, economically, educationally and culturally, women and men of the rural Africa should be involved. This mass involvement can be realized only using their language as a medium and through their language. Oyetade (2001:20) also explained the need for standardization by referring its contribution in the development of a nation. He said standardization is essential to facilitate communication, enhance unification, simplify teaching, and serve a political purpose etc. Generally, to use the languages in development of a country standardization is highly essential. It is turning linguistic varieties into standard languages in the sense of: An approved and accepted norm above all vernacular, colloquial and dialectal varieties for generalized and normative usage in certain domains such as literature, science, higher education, the media, the churches and all public sectors. A regular and codified normative system of reference supported by a standard orthography, standard reference grammars and standard dictionaries. According to Wolff (2002) fully fledged standard language will, enjoy recognition as such by the whole speech community (for instance, as a

prestigious high variety in a diglossia situation), reflect linguistic (Possibly national or even ethnic) identity, have or develop a rich writing tradition and be potentially equipped to encode all necessary modernization in its lexicon. It is used effectively as high variety, predominantly for written communication in matters of official concerns on regional, national or international level. In this sense, only a small number of Africans languages and even the worlds languages are standard. The most illuminating and successful cases of language standardization in Africa are, for various different reasons and possibly in that order, Afrikaans, Kiswahili, Hausa, Somali and Shona. For example, Kiswahili has more than sixty years of standardization history (Miyamoto, 2001). During these sixty years, different activities carried out to modernize it in the particular country it is spoken separately and jointly as a cross-border language. From such activities: changes of the orthography, lexical enrichment, semantic, grammatical and phonological changes and the like done successfully. 1.1.

Orthography Standardization and of African Languages

Orthography development is one of the major works in African languages. According to Anderson (2009) African languages have very recent writing history which is not more than two centuries. Most African cultures are being described as oral, apart from Arabic in the north and a limited amount of use of the Arabic script for languages in the Sahel and Swahili, the Ethiopic abugida in the Horn of Africa. Most writing of African languages uses the Latin script. Many, especially less widely spoken ones, do not have a set orthography. As UNESCO document shows approximately 80% of African languages do not have an established orthography.

As Ethnologue indicates, Africa has 2,092 languages, with 675millions speakers. And also have recent writing traditions, and less support in language policy and planning. As Anderson (ibid) describes by referring Osborn (2007), another feature of the language situation in Africa involves the role played by the colonials. Not only did they leave a continent with most language groups split across borders, but an overlay of several European languages act as official or semiofficial languages in all states. While the European languages can facilitate communication across the continent, they also serve to add a new set of linguistic divisions. Hence, the linguistic situation is a complex, multilingual one in which Africans must master several languages for use in different contexts. Hence the writing system dominated by this situation.

1.2. Transborder Languages Standardization in Africa

As history shows, European colonials have hastily drawn lines on maps without any consideration of ethnic and linguistic reality of the partitioned people in their scramble of Africa (Chumbow and Tamanji, 2001). This unfortunate outcome of Berlin 1884 conference creates many transborder languages in Africa. Given the role of language as an element of culture, a common language across the frontier is an indispensable tool for transborder cooperation, if it is developed and used to serve the people. These languages can be jointly standardized, developed and used for mutual benefit of the two countries by building joint language planning committee for different transborder languages like, Fulfulde, Gbaya, Fanga, Kiswahili etc. The activity of those transborder language committees shall be founded to identify standard variety, lexical and orthographic standardization, Harmonizing the standard form, design and provision of learning materials and the like. The development of transborder languages is not only helping to facilitate communication but also as a means of resolve tension. Therefore as

Chumbow and Tamanji (ibid) suggested a lot more effort should be put into their standardization.

1.3. Language Planning Models and Its Application in Africa

As Magwa (2006:119) and Chumbow (1987) stated language planning activities in Africa differ substantially from those in the developed countries of Europe and America in a number of ways. Globally the most dominant model of language planning is the Canonical Model. This model serves as a guide to countries like Zimbabwe. The model relates language planning to all other forms of planning or national development. Some of the main features of the Canonical model are: The model emphasizes fact finding in terms of relevant socio linguistic surveys and profiles, demographic cultural and political considerations as input to policy decisions. Policy is arrived at from a judicious choice of the ideal policy from among careful articulated policy alternatives. Cost benefit analysis is envisaged and undertaken as an internal part of policy formulation. Adoption of a policy means acceptance of financial implications. A central agency, such as a government authority is required to coordinate all planning activities and maximize all efforts directed to words national development. The model is future oriented in two ways, namely Strategies and policies as well as procedures cost and outcomes are specified in advance of action taken to implement the policy.

Planners are prepared to concede the effort, time and resource as an investment in a project whose results lie in a long term future expectation.

The multilingual nature of African nations and the level of linguistic complexity in the countries, it is obvious that there is a gap in what the Cannonial model of language planning requires as planning and what is actually practiced on the ground as Magwa, (2006,122). Areas of disparity between the requirements and the practice of language planning are: Most policy decisions are taken without the benefit of the socio linguistic fact Language planning activities are the result of personal efforts of individuals and private organization often without government support. efforts are uncoordinated non professional undertaking of planning activities projects often abandoned mid stream objectives, procedures and methods of planning are not clearly defined and outlined thus making evaluation of progress at every stage difficult and sometimes impossible The canonical model of language planning thus has to be modified as to take due cognizance of language planning practices prevalent in Africa, as Magwa (ibid) suggested.

2.

Language Policies Of African Countries

have inherited from their respective colonial powers (Magwa,

Most African countries have the overall structure of language policies which they 2006:116). Based on this it is possible to categorize in two broad general classes.

Exoglossic language policy countries: are countries that use foreign languages as major official language. For example: English is given priority and greater prestige in countries such as Kenya where Kiswahili is national language and English is official language. Likewise in Zimbabwe Shona, Ndebele and other minority languages have recognition English uses as language of the major domains including education. Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, etc are in this class. Endoglossic language policy countries: Only Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Guinea pursue an active endoglossic language policy (i.e. use of indigenous languages as the major media of communication throughout the most important domains of the society). As Magwa (ibid) from these countries Guinea Language policy is a model for many African states. Its edoglossic policy which adopted in 1958 since then eight (8) indigenous languages have been developed into official national languages. In this country, for example, competence in one of the eight national languages is a requirement for employment in the civil service or advancement in socio economic status. On the other hand, countries like Zimbabwe, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia and Many others nations the primordial language policies that are dominated by European languages. Together with all these, most language policy decisions taken in several of the developing African countries with their one party state as military dictatorship are more appropriately styled planning by decree. Status decisions do not necessarily have to follow patterns of western democracies. It is usually carries out by politicians (non language expert) and the consideration involved in the decisions are often political rather than socio linguistic. We can look at Kenya, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Nigeria and the like African countries as an example.

Having this general categories of African language policy and planning activities there are also some specific classifications of African language policies and situations.

2.1.Typologies of Language Situations and Policies in Africa

The language situation of a country is a base for the language policy of a given country. It basically supposed to be a reference to formulate appropriate policies and strategies. Based on this assumption the language situation and policies of Africa can be analyzed, in reference with the status of indigenous African languages, in the following way. 2.2.1. Typology Of Language Situation According to the report Of Intergovernmental Conference on Language Policies in Africa (Chimhundu, 1998), there are different typologies both for language situations of African languages and language policies. Regarding language situation of African languages, the typology can be categorized as follow: Nations with one African language spoken by the vast majority of the population In this category there are two groups. These are: I. Countries using African languages as a mother tongue such as Somalia (Somali language), Lesotho (Sesotho), Rwanda (Kinya-rwanda), Swaziland (siSwati), Burundi (Kirundi), and Botswana (Setswana) II. Countries using African languages as a lingua franca such as Kenya and Tanzania (Kiswahili),the central African republic (Sango), Mali (Bambara), Senegal (Wolof), Sudan (Arabic) and Ethiopia (Amharic) Nations having a predominant African language Countries in this category includes: Ghana (Akan-Twi), BurkinaFaso (More/Mosi), Nigeria (Hausa), Zimbabwe (Shona), Togo (Ewe), Benin (Ge), Malawi (Chichewa)

Nations with several dominant African languages in competition, These category includes countries such as Nigeria, (Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo), sierr aleone (Temne, Mende), and Zaire (kikongo, Lingala, chilumba, kisiwahili/kinguana) Nations having no predominant African language, In this category countries such as Cameron (Bulu and Ewanda however are widely used in the south, and Fulani in the north adjacent to Nigeria) Ivory Coast, Mozambique, and Cote dIvoire, are included. Countries in the second and the third categories, as Lodhi (1993) explained, have good possibility of developing one or more indigenous African languages as their national/official languages, but there is the constant threat of rivalry between the various language groups. For example, Nigeria follows the Indian model, in which the regional language (i.e. the largest language in the region) is the medium of instruction at the primary level; English is the medium at the secondary and higher levels. At the secondary level, one more regional language is introduced. For students of arts, a third regional language (and/or French) is offered. At the university level, language/linguistics students are offered a non-Nigerian African language e.g. Arabic and Swahili. 2.2.2. Typologies Of Current Language Policies Based on these general language situations, basically on indigenous languages of Africa, the typology of current language policies of Africa can be categorized as follows. Countries which consciously promote one language; These countries policies have two forms. I. as exoglossic, Francophone countries (excluding Zaire) like Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea Bissau (Portuguese), Liberia (English) II. as endoglossic, Tanzania (Kiswahili) Ethiopia (Amharic), Somalia (Somali) and the Central African Republic (Sango)

Countries having an exoglossic language policy but with developing endoglossic tendencies like Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Burundi, Rwanda, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, and the Central African Republic (all except Uganda with one African language being promoted at national level) Countries having an exoglossic language with more than one African language being promoted like Nigeria, Guinea, and Zaire. Countries with an exoglossic language policy ,but using indigenous language in some areas (e.g. first year of primary education, limited local language press and the law courts) Zambia, Zimbabwe, and sierra lion. Apart from indigenous languages of Africa, According to Lodhi (1993), we can divide the linguistic map of Africa into several parts. These are Anglophone countries Francophone countries Luzophone countries Arabiphone countries Swahiliphone countries As far as the choice of the language of administration is concerned, most countries in Africa have, because of political and/or economic reasons, chosen colonial languages as their official languages, at times together with one or more African languages as national languages. Nineteen countries have English as their official language, twentieth two have French, five have Portuguese and one has Spanish. Arabic is the official language in seven African countries, and in several countries an African language has been chosen as the first or second official language together with a metropolitan language, e.g. Amharic in Ethiopia, Swahili in East Africa, Somali in Somalia and Chichewa in Malawi, together with English.

2.3. Past and present language policies in Africa

Past and present language policies have a lot to do with the present situations in Africa countries. The fact that colonialism has been the

experience of almost all African except Ethiopia, the policy of languages were said to be heavily determined by the following factors according to Nyombe (1998:126): the missionaries colonial administrators and post colonial governments

The missionaries, for instance, found the local languages to be effective for their religious activities and the translation of bible into indigenous languages, dictionaries and other educational materials were produced. in southern Sudan work on the local languages started in 1848 and continued until the mid 1930s. in 1928 the colonial government give support to this policy of vernacular language empowerment by recognizing the use of local languages in administration and in education. For instance Bari, Shilluk, Dinka, Zande, Nuer and Lotuho were given this position. However, the policy of vernacular empowerment was reversed at independence in 1956 in favor of Arabic. As Nyombe (ibid) states by referring Abdulaziz (1992), in Kenya the missionaries and colonial government also had a lot to do with the development of vernacular languages. While the missionaries were attracted by the development of the vernaculars as vehicles of religious activities, the colonial rulers were interested in the use of these languages for successful communication and administration. English were the language of administration in this country vertically to district level and Kiswahili was the lingua franca. Even the post independence situation in Kenya still remained the same virtually. In Tanzania, too, Kiswahili gained dominance at the expense of other local languages and presently the government has the enthusiasm in order to revive the local languages. Concerning the Ethiopian situation, Bender and Cooper (as cited in Nyombe, ibid) indicate that Geez was anciently the language of the kingdom which is now restricted to religious services. With the breakup of the kingdom the

fourth century by invaders (the Turkish, Persians and Arabs) and the Italians in the 20th c, Italian and Arabic was introduced. In the federation between Eretria and Ethiopia (1952 - 1962) Amharic was the official language of the country. The military socialist government latter declared in 1974, that every nationality has the right to develop its own political, economic and social life and its own language. As a consequence 15 major languages were designated as national languages. Presently the EPRDF has in its constitution granted each and each and every nations and nationalities recognition to be used as regional official languages and medium of instruction. 2.4.

African Language Policy Formulation advances

According to the Harare declaration of the intergovernmental conference (1997), each country/region should formulate its own policy on the basis of established needs and an informed awareness of its prevailing linguistic situation, as well as the language equipment of its citizens but within a general framework leading to a common vision. To arrive at such a policy the following stated in the document to look at the following issues: I. determining the correct typology of a country's language situation, and defining the statuses of the country's various languages, taking into account their functions and the media (oral, written, electronic, etc.) in which they are used II. establishing how many languages and language families there are in a given country, as well as what each is used for, who uses them, and people's attitudes towards them; III. Involving all concerned individuals and/or groups of individuals in the formulation and implementation of language policies; IV. Organizing follow-up and monitoring activities at national and regional levels in conjunction with such organizations as UNESCO and the AU.

2.5. Guideline for African language policy formulation

As it declared at the Harare Declaration of the Intergovernmental conference (1997) proposed the following guidelines for policy formulation: All African language policy should be those that enhance the chance of attaining the vision of African development Each country should produce a clear language policy document, within which every language spoken in the country can find its place Guideline for policy formulation should be sanctioned by legislative action Every country policy framework should be flexible enough to allow each community to use its language side-by side with other languages which integrating with the wider society, within an empowering language policy that caters for communications at local, national, and international A language policy- formulating and monitoring instruction body should be established in each country According to the declaration, the strategies for African language policy implementation can be well treated at Pan-African level, Regional level and Government level 2.6.

Selected African Countries Language policy Profile

As stated the current language profiles of some African countries looks the following (Chimhundu, 1998). South Africa South Africa now probably has the most progressive Constitution in the world, at least as regards language rights. Since South Africa's democratic transition in April 1994, the government has taken up the challenge of moving from two official languages to eleven, which means that more than 98% of the home languages spoken by the total population of 46.9 million people are now accounted for - in contrast to the two-language policy during apartheid, which favored the white minority. South Africas Constitution (Act No. 108 of 1996) recognizes not only the eleven official languages (English,

Afrikaans, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, isiNdebele, siSwati, Xitsonga and Tshivenda) but also the promotion of other languages which referred to as heritage languages. These heritage languages include indigenous languages like the khoisan languages, languages such as German and French, as well as for languages for religious purposes like Hindi and Tamil. Language plan of South Africa, according to the countrys constitution, should address the various language issues in terms of needs of the people. There are relevant issues for language in teaching and learning in education area. These are learners concentrated on the language up to grade 2 or 3 and from there onwards adds another language throughout schooling but preferably end up in grade 12 with four languages. The second issue is that every school, maybe there is exceptionally not, and uses either English or Afrikaans as his or her language. Zambia Zambia has seven local languages that are taught in schools from grade one to secondary level and then beyond up to university. The major problem they are facing is that, although government always says it is committed to the development of local languages; there is no funding. Government has provided funds for colonial languages like English in contrast. In addition English is the official language of the country. Cameroon There are 50 main languages in Cameroon in which English and French are official languages. The most widely spoken language beside English and French is Pidgin English, which is one third of the country. For judicial purposes, only English and French are used. If defendants speak in their mother tongue, an interpreter is employed. This also applies to the legislature, where member of the parliament speak either English or French. In regional administration, officials are also obliged to use one of the official languages. At secondary school, French and English are medium of

instruction, whereas Cameroon languages are used for teaching for the first three years of primary schools. Very few of the 248 languages in Cameroon have been standardized. As documents shows some standardization works done on 20 languages and 73 are on the way. Among the six countries in the country, two of them are interested in teaching national language. In addition, national languages are used in teaching of adult literacy. Senegal Senegals official language is French. There are six national languages. These are Diola, Malinke, Poular, Serer, Soninke and Wolof. Standardization of these languages has taken place recently. French is used in the legislature, but the use of national languages has been authorized in even encouraged since non French speaking parliamentarians were elected. French is the official language of judiciary, but interpreters are often employed to interpret to and from national languages and it is a language of executives and regional administration. In the area of education, preschool teaching takes place in national language, with the first two years of school being conducted by the mother tongue and French being introduced in the third grade. At secondary school, French and English are obligatory and the other foreign languages are available as subjects, together with one national language. Arabic has an important place as a medium of religious and cultural practices. In commerce, communication is dominated by national language. In radio and television national languages are used more than French and in press the reverse is true. Ethiopia Historically Ethiopia has covert language policies and in all the regimes promoted one language policy (Getachew and Derib, 2oo6). A clear language policy came out at paper level in the reign of Haile Sellasie I. The policy of Derg regime was seemed the first multilingual policy to give a hope for the

development of many Ethiopian languages. But the implementation was different. The current government of Ethiopia now is trying to implement a multilingual language policy since 1994. There are about six official languages at regional level: Amharic, Afar, Aderi (Harari), Afan Oromo, Tigrignya and Somali and Amharic is an official language at federal level. There are also about 10 languages (Sidama, Kambata, Kafa, Hadiya, Gamo, Gofa, Wolayta, Dawro, Silti, Gedeo) languages that are used as official languages at zone and district level. Primary education is given in more than 20 languages. The FDREs 1994 constitution Article 5 guarantees the multilingual language policy situation of the country. It says: 1. All Ethiopian languages shall enjoy equal state of recognition. 2. Amharic shall be the working language of the Federal Government. 3. Members of the Federation may determine their respective languages. 2.7.

Sign Language in African language policy

According to Okoth Okombo (?) deaf persons who use the sign language of a particular country simply form a language community. Thus, for example, Kenyans who use Kenyan sign language constitute a language minority in relation to the rest of the community of Kenyans who use spoken language. For countries that would adopt a two-language policy. E.g. Rwanda, the deaf citizen could simply be treated as a special group for whom compulsory literacy would have to be in one official spoken language only. Their language would language replace the second official spoken language. For a three-language country, e.g., Kenya, each hearing person would ideally be trilingual. This trilingualism would involve three spoken language in the following pattern: One international language of wider communication, e.g. English. sign

 One intra-national language of wider communication, e.g. Kiswahili. One sub-national community language. For a deaf person it this situation, the relevant national sign language would take the place of the community language and the intra-national language which is used for linking all the deaf in the country. Therefore, one language plays two roles for deaf communities. This leaves them with only the international language of wider communication to learn at school. However sign language doesnt get enough attention in many African countries. On the other hand countries like South Africa have relatively a good experience in sign language policy formulation and implementation. Sign language usage is one of the linguistic rights that should be kept. Therefore it should get enough attention.

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