African Languages and linguistics

These files were converted from Word Perfect a few years ago and still undergo some correction. The current version is 30th December 2023, which has added clarification on the encoding of 'when' for past events (in chapter 13 and appendix D.).

Créés il y a plus de 20 ans avec le logiciel Word Perfect, et plus récemment convertis, ces fichiers sont édités de temps en temps alors qu'il reste quelques traces du processus de conversion. L'édition la plus récente est du 30 Décembre 2023, avec clarification, en chapitre 13 et dans l'appendice D, sur les manières de dire 'quand' pour le passé.

The Taali (stories) collected by Abdalla Diallo, to which the grammar makes reference, are available as a separate file.
Un fichier avec les Taali (contes) recuillis par Abdalla Diallo, auxquelles la grammaire fait référence, est disponible sur demande.

Mmen is part of the Grassfield Bantu language family, a branch of the
languages found in Cameroon. Grassfields Bantu languages are known to
systems as compared to languages found within Narrow Bantu for
focuses on nominal tone in Mmen as realised within noun stems from noun
Mmen has three level tones on the surface, i.e., high [H], mid [M] and low [L],
contour tones, i.e., [HM], [HL] and [LH]. The nouns are presented in isolation
different contexts where the stems are preceded by either a /H/ or a /L/
sometimes realise identical tone patterns in isolation but, once put in a
different tonal alternations. This is due to the different underlying tones
surface tones are derived. The present study suggests that all surface
sequences of two underlying tones, i.e., /H/ and /L/. The sequences of /H/
are then realised differently on the surface due to the different tonal
the Mmen noun.

Despite its inaccessibility (it remains untranslated and copies are hard to obtain), Vinigi Grottanelli’s Pescatori dell’Oceano indiano (1955) is generally agreed to be one of the best studies of a rural Swahili-speaking community. It’s our principal ethnographic source on the Bajuni (aka Gunya, aka Tikuu), whose traditional territory comprised a long string of coastal settlements and islands between Kismayu (Somalia) in the north and the Lamu archipelago (Kenya) in the south. And the political turmoil of recent decades in Somalia has turned it into a valuable historical document, a record of a way of life that for thousands of Bajuni has been shattered by persecution and conflict.

Between the Kola Forest and the Salty Sea reveals the long-hidden story of those who lived in the region before Liberia was created.

Here are a few of the inspiring revelations it contains:

• The different languages and ethnic groups in Liberia share a common root.
• The barkless hunting dog found in Liberian villages were a favorite pet of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs.
• Kola - once used as an ingredient in soft drinks - was discovered by the ancestors of Liberians.
• Early European explorers learned from early Liberian seafarers how to navigate some dangerous currents and winds of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Rice growers from West African's "Grain Coast" helped teach Americans how to grow rice. Today, the United States exports rice to West Africa, including Liberia.

Between the Kola Forest and the Salty Sea took 30 years of research and uses documents first published in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and French. It draws on oral traditions, archaeological digs, historical linguistics, studies of cultural patterns embedded in masks and other forms of material culture, regional and continental histories, and even biological anthropology.

Just as West African farmers burn a field to remove weeds, Between the Kola Forest and the Salty Sea demolishes many negative stereotypes. For centuries, African cultures have been portrayed as "strange," "weird," even "evil" through the use of words like "fetish," "witch," and "country devil."

This book will change Liberian history - and Liberians - for good!

The paper examines the role of language policy and planning in teaching and learning a third language, using the case of Swahili in Uganda. In this paper, it is argued that the partial implementation of the language in education policy or lack thereof negates the realization of the national objective of trilingual population that can linguistically function at the local, regional and international levels. Drawing from Tollefson's (2006) language planning framework, the study posits that partial implementation of the language policy and more specifically the language in education policy impedes second or additional language acquisition in a linguistically diverse society. In this paper, we rely on data from a biographical questionnaire, a proficiency test and documentary analysis to draw conclusions on the effect of language policy and language in education policy on the teaching and learning of Swahili as a third language in Uganda. Ikisiri Makala hii inachunguza dhima ya sera ya lugha na mipango ya lugha katika ufundishaji na ujifunzaji lugha ya tatu kwa kuzingatia hali ya Kiswahili nchini Uganda. Makala inasisitiza kwamba kutotekelezwa kikamilifu kwa sera ya lugha ya taifa pamoja na sera ya lugha ya kufundishia kumekuwa kikwazo cha utimizaji wa lengo la kitaifa la kuwa na wananchi wanaoweza kujieleza vyema kilugha katika ngazi za kitaifa, kikanda na kimataifa. Kwa kuongozwa na msingi wa kinadharia wa Tollefson (2006) wa mtandao wa mipango ya lugha, uchunguzi huu unasisitiza kwamba kutotekelezwa kwa sera ya lugha kunazuia ufundishaji na ujifunzaji wa lugha ya tatu katika jamii yenye lugha nyingi tofauti. Uchunguzi huu ulitegemea data kutoka hojaji, kipima-umahiri na uchanganuzi wa maandishi kudhihirisha namna sera ya lugha ya kitatifa na sera ya lugha ya kufundishia zinavyoathiri ufundishaji na ujifunzaji wa Kiswahili kama lugha ya tatu nchini Uganda.

Bantu languages, which are spoken throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, permit wh-questions to be constructed in multiple ways, including wh-in-situ, full wh-movement, and partial wh-movement. Shona, a Bantu language spoken by about 13 million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, allows all three of these types. In this dissertation, I conduct the first in-depth examination of Shona wh-questions, drawing on fifty hours of elicitation with a native speaker consultant to explore the derivational relationships among these strategies.

Wh-in-situ questions have received a wide variety of treatments in the syntactic literature, ranging from covert or disguised movement to postsyntactic binding of the wh-phrase by a silent question operator. In Bantu languages, wh-in-situ questions are often taken to be derived via a non-movement relation (e.g., Carstens 2005 for Kilega, Diercks 2010 for Lubukusu, Muriungi 2003 for Kîîtharaka, Sabel 2000 for Kikuyu and Duala, Sabel & Zeller 2006 for Zulu, Schneider-Zioga 2007 for Kinande), but alternatives have rarely been considered. I demonstrate how movement-based analyses that have been proposed for wh-in-situ in non-Bantu languages make the wrong predictions for Shona wh-in-situ, which lacks word order permutation, extraction marking, island effects, and intervention effects. These properties provide support for the traditional Bantuist view that the relation between the pronunciation site of an in-situ wh-phrase and its scopal position in the left periphery is not movement; I claim that in Shona it is unselective binding.

Many Bantu languages, including Shona, prohibit wh-phrases from appearing in the canonical preverbal subject position. Wasike (2007) demonstrates that this restriction applies to topicalized non-subjects as well as preverbal subjects. I replicate these results for Shona and argue that they cast doubt on Sabel & Zeller's (2006) attempt to characterize the ban with an appeal to improper movement. I argue instead that restrictions on the distribution of wh-in-situ in Bantu are tied to restrictions on the domain for focus licensing. This claim is further bolstered by an examination of crosslinguistic variation within Bantu with respect to whether the ban on in-situ preverbal wh-subjects applies in embedded clauses. I observe a previously unnoticed generalization: languages that universally ban in-situ preverbal wh-subjects (like Zulu) have immediately after the verb (IAV) focus effects; languages that do allow in-situ preverbal wh-subjects in embedded clauses (like Shona, Lubukusu, and Kîîtharaka) also lack IAV effects.

Full wh-movement in Shona gives rise to questions that bear a certain similarity to English wh-questions. However, using a range of diagnostics including extraction marking, island effects, reconstruction effects, and the distribution of temporal modifiers, I argue that what appears to be full wh-movement in Shona actually has a cleft structure: the wh-phrase moves to become the head of a relative clause, which is selected by a copula in the matrix clause. Just as in wh-in-situ, an ex-situ wh-phrase is pronounced lower than its scopal position, and the relation between these two positions is established via unselective binding. Additional evidence for this proposal comes from the sensitivity of partial wh-movement to island boundaries below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase, a pattern that has been predicted by previous analyses (e.g., Abels 2012, Sabel 2000, Sabel & Zeller 2006) but for which empirical support has been lacking until now. I therefore unify full and partial wh-movement under a single analysis for cleft-based wh-in-situ that involves a step of relativization (independently needed for relative clauses) and a step of unselective binding (independently needed for wh-in-situ).

An introduction to African languages is a somewhat atypical work that serves, on the one hand,
as a kind of extended scholarly review of a selection of significant linguistic research on African
languages from as for back as Koelle (1854) to the present day, while, on the other hand,
adopting a tone and format more along the lines of an introductory textbook than a book for
specialists.

Ghana has witnessed a recurrent debate on the usefulness of indigenous Ghanaian languages in childhood education. It is assumed that using the mother tongue as a Medium of Instruction (MOI) during the early years improves children’s ability to acquire knowledge and other languages. Not everybody subscribes to this view though. There are those who feel that a solid start in English offers children a better chance of succeeding in school and in their careers. Presently, some parents who subscribe to the latter view have taken the extra step of stopping the use of indigenous Ghanaian languages at home. This paper presents the results of our investigation into whether the home language practices of Ghanaian students have any impact on their performance in English written argumentative discourse. The results are based on an analysis of an assigned essay of 92 students from one of Ghana’s best senior high schools. We then correlated their per-formance with responses they gave to a questionnaire interrogating their background and language use at home. While some speak the native language at home, others grew up speaking exclusively English. We show that students who combine English and native Ghanaian languages at home performed better than those who used only English or only Ghanaian languages.

This paper presents a model of size and shape depiction in the manual modality, based on a micro-level analysis of the lexicon of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana). The model combines strong elements of previous models, such as a dyadic labeling system separating form and meaning as suggested in Taub (2001, Language from the body: Iconicity and metaphor in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), and the category of distance for size (Sowa and Wachsmuth 2003, Coverbal iconic gestures for object descriptions in virtual environments: An empirical study. In M. Rector, I. Poggi & N. Trigo (eds.), Gestures: Meaning and use, 365–376. Porto: Edicous Universidade Fernando Pessoa). It systematically describes depiction at the parameter level, viewing size and shape depiction as compositional in nature. The model is innovative in distinguishing two main categories for the expression of size and shape, i. e., shape for shape depiction, and distance for size depiction. The role of movement is seen as secondary to these two categories, and either signals extent (when combined with shape for shape depiction) or a change in it (when combined with distance for size depiction). Applying the model to a set of lexical data of Adamorobe Sign Language revealed the need for a new sub-category for distance for size depiction, i. e., of body-based distance for size depiction as found in so-called measure stick signs. Parameter-level analysis is indispensable for cross-linguistic comparisons. To this end, frequency data are presented as well. Keywords: descriptive model for size and shape depiction, Adamorobe Sign Language, gestural/manual depiction, measure stick signs, patterned iconicity, embodiment

Pichi belongs to the African branch of the family of Afro-Caribbean English-Lexifier Creoles. It is spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. Pichi is an offshoot of Krio, which first arrived in Bioko, the former Fernando Po, with African settlers from Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1827. It is the most widely used language of Bioko next to Spanish. No official figures exist but by extrapolation from population data, there is reason to assume that Pichi is used by at least a 100’000 people as a first and second language.

Chapter 2, Section 7(3), of the Kenyan constitution, of (The Re public of Kenya 2010) stipulates that the state shall develop, promote and protect the diversity of languages of the people of Kenya. Although this statement has no direct implication to the language of education policy in the Kenyan system of education, their implementation will largely affect the language policy in education. This paper explores ways in which the constitution can be used as a catalyst in the promotion; developments, protection of indigenous languages and at the same time use them as medium of instruction in schools in Kenya.

There currently exists extensive literature written on the topic of negation but only recently have studies of negation begun to expand outside of the limited scope of Indo-European languages. Linguists are finding that certain patterns thought to be cross-linguistic occur mainly in this most heavily studied language family. The intent of this article is to provide a succinct survey of the negation strategies in a collection of Kwa (Niger-Congo) languages in order to contribute to the literature on negation. Commonly cited patterns such as Jespersen's cycle (Jespersen 1917) are almost entirely unattested in this language group. There is a consistent pattern of marking negation in Akan, Ewe, and the North Guang languages involving the use of a preverbal nasal morpheme. Interestingly three South Guang languages utilize instead a verbal prefix-. The Ga-Dangme languages stand out from other Kwa languages in their use of verbal suffixes rather than prefixes. The Ghana-Togo Mountain languages of the Kwa group also do not rely on preverbal nasal negation marking.

Language is an extremely important tool in any society. Its’ indispensability nature
always necessitates the continuous development. Apart from using language for
communication, language is also used for education. In fact, without language, there is
no education. A library is one of the tools that thus preserves and keep language for
education. The objective of this paper is to examine the role libraries play in the
preservation and development of languages in any society. This paper explains how the
library functions as “language bank” by preserving the linguistically
documented/recorded information, ideas, history etc. The paper laid much emphasis on
the crucial roles of libraries in preserving languages, especially the endangered ones.

This paper critically contributes to the question of what a descriptive approach can contribute to the clarification of the linguistic status of Sheng. As a starting point I take my own experience of the transparency of the transcripts of conversations amongst young people from Eastleigh (Nairobi) which were labeled “Sheng”. From this follows a methodological and conceptual critique of the available literature on Sheng that aims at operationalizing the notion of linguistic practice and language as resource. As one possible alternative I suggest to make use of a repertoire based approach to language description and applying a corpus linguistic perspective to the data. From that point of view, however, categorial distinctions between Swahili, Nairobi Swahili and Sheng lose relevance. Taking (Standard) Swahili as a descriptive background,
the results show that the verbal complex is marked by a surprisingly high degree of Swahili linguistic proficiency and some innovation. Restructuring and reduction is mainly visible within the nominal phrase. Therefore the results support the literature with regard to the nominal phrase, albeit from the background of a more “disinterested” data collection. In addition, processes of innovation and restructuring are displayed through the instability of the phenomena that become visible in the corpus. Finally, I suggest understanding Sheng primarily as the name given to urban/urban youth practices of which linguistic practices are but one aspect.

Adamorobe Sign Language is the sign language used in the village of
Adamorobe in
Ghana. This sign language has evolved as a result of the high hereditary
deafness incidence in this village. Adamorobe has approximately 1400
inhabitants, more than 30 of whom are deaf.
The main spoken language in the village is Akan, a Kwa language. This
thesis aims to give a description of aspects of Adamorobe Sign Language
(AdaSL) and to compare these with other sign languages as well as with
Akan. It attempts thus to contribute to our knowledge of possible structures
in human language and in languages in the visual modality in particular.
More than spoken languages, the sign languages studied so far show
structural similarities.
These corresponding structures seem to be motivated by the
communicative channel used by sign languages – that is, the visual-spatial
modality. However, the well-studied sign languages not only share their
modality, but they also occur in corresponding, rather specific social
conditions. Thus, most of well-studied are relatively young, they are used by
rather large Deaf communities, have an atypical acquisition pattern and a
history of suppression. Home sign languages –sign languages of deaf people
who do not regularly communicate with other deaf people- arise in radically
different circumstances and are therefore much more divers in structure. It is
commonly assumed that large sign languages have arisen from the merger of
several home sign languages as documented in the case of Nicaragua Sign
Language.
The considerable structural variety in home sign languages and the
relatively great similarity between large sign languages suggest that
languages develop along a unidirectional path leading to structural
convergence. Sign languages arisen and used in hearing communities also
appear to have a different structure. However, the differences in the social
settings of these three types of sign languages differ to such an extent that it
is hard to establish which ones are really relevant. The differences in social
settings between AdaSL and large sign languages are relatively small and
enable us to evaluate the influence of these differences. Thus like the large
sign languages AdaSL has a community of deaf people and a comparable
time depth.
A significant but well defined difference concerns the
intergenerational transmission. In large deaf communities transmission is
hampered by the fact that most deaf children are born in hearing families. In
Adamorobe a deaf child is surrounded by signing relatives from early on. In addition, there seems to be a difference in the experience of deafness, in
particular in the lack of a distinct Deaf community.
The chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this thesis give a comparative description of a
number of AdaSL aspects. In chapter 2 it becomes clear that if we compare
AdaSL to NGT, a large sign language, the former uses considerable sign
space, has many lexical signs with a non manual element and a small set of
unmarked hand shapes. AdaSL rather resembles home sign and young sign
languages in these respects.
Chapter 3 deals with the lexicon, specifically the semantic fields of
relationship, colour, numbers, time and names. The lexicon appears to be
strongly influenced by Akan considering the frequent use of mouthings and
loan translations.
Chapter 4 describes various ways of expressing form and size in
AdaSL. In a number of ways AdaSL diverts significantly from what is
common in the large sign languages so far studied. This is particularly
notable in the use of so called measure stick signs. These measure stick signs
are also used by hearing people in Ghana and other parts of Africa.
Moreover AdaSL has standard signs to indicate a relative size which do not,
as seems to be the case in other sign languages, adapt to the absolute size of
the entity in question.
Chapter 5 describes expressions of motion. A structure that seems to
be common in almost any large sign language is the so-called classifierconstruction.
Whereas handle classifier constructions typically express
externally controlled motion, entity classifier constructions typically express
internally controlled motion. AdaSL rarely uses handle classifier
constructions to express externally controlled movements. Moreover, AdaSL
appears not to make use of a system of entity classifiers.
In AdaSL the usual way to indicate movement is through ´directionals´.
These movement signs (which can be spatially modified) each express a
basic movement pattern of movement regarding the cause of the movement
e.g. TOWARDS or ENTER. They may occur in a series with a sign expressing
manipulation (e.g. TAKE) or expressing a way of moving (such as RUN), thus
specifying the Cause of the movement.
From the descriptive chapters a pattern of features typical of AdaSL
arises. These are discussed in chapter 6.

As was the case with many newly independent African nations, Somalia was beset by a language problem whose complexity had begun well before independence and the unification of British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland in 1960. With three languages (English, Arabic, and Italian) used as media of communication in government offices and in schools, various Somali administrations struggled to contain the impasse but found no tangible solution. Barely three years after Mohamed Siad Barre seized power in October 1969, he had his military regime introduce the Somali orthography in the Latin alphabet. Based on this milestone, Siad Barre's military rule is highly commended for taking a remarkable step forward in what came to be known as the Somalization project. However, officials of the government and Somali scholarship failed to

Cet article propose de contribuer à une réflexion théorique sur le « parler jeune » en tant que construction idéologique et modèle réflexif d'utilisation de la langue, dans une perspective d’anthropologie sémiotique, à partir de l’exemple du francanglais (ou camfranglais) au Cameroun. La réflexion est basée sur la théorie de la mise en registre (enregisterment) d’A. Agha (2007), selon laquelle un registre ou un style langagier est un modèle culturel d'action qui résulte de processus socio-historiques de « mise en registre », processus par lesquels ses formes et ses valeurs sont reconnues comme distinctes de celles attribuées à d'autres registres, et sont associées à des types spécifiques de pratiques sociales, de personae (locuteurs et interlocuteurs) et d'activités (Agha 2007 : 168). Il s'agit donc de décrire les processus de mise en frontière à l’œuvre dans les discours métapragmatiques de migrants camerounais résidant en région parisienne, âgés de 25 à 30 ans. À travers l’opposition entre langue et argot, qui recoupe celle entre français et francanglais, les sujets réactualisent les idéologies associées à l'argot qui le définissent comme une sous-variété de la langue standard, associée à des interactions informelles et à des valeurs sociales ambivalentes (Agha 2015). Ainsi, ils tracent des frontières non seulement entre des locuteurs types, mais aussi entre deux types de relations sociales : la relation de proximité affective ou de solidarité, basée sur le partage de caractéristiques sociales communes, et la relation de distance ou de pouvoir. Cette analyse nous amène, en conclusion, à problématiser la relation entre langage et jeunesse pour le francanglais : comme pour les autres « parlers jeunes », les formes langagières associées au francanglais indexeraient d'abord, au niveau de l'interaction, des positionnements tels que la familiarité et la proximité affective, ainsi que des caractéristiques personnelles du locuteur et des activités sociales spécifiques, avant d’indexer, de façon indirecte, l’appartenance à une classe d’âge. La relation entre le francanglais et la catégorie « jeune » n'est donc pas directe et exclusive, mais elle dépend surtout du sens que les locuteurs (qu'ils soient ou non perçus comme
« jeunes ») veulent construire en interaction.

This work focuses on a description of Kwa', the Bantu-Grassfield language of Cameroon. This study is intended to contribute to the preservation of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Kwa', to the standardization of its writing and to the future development of educational materials for its teaching. In short, it is a contribution to its promotion, as advocated by Cameroon's language policy. Our objective here is to see to what extent we can continue the process of standardization of this language, which is in great danger of extinction according to Bitjaa Kody (2004), and according to the criteria of UNESCO (2003). In order to do so, we propose to describe the morphological structure of the Kwa' language, with the aim of elaborating the principles of a standard orthography of this language based on the rules that derive mainly from the description of its phonological and morphological structure , as well as other sociolinguistic and practical considerations. To carry out the description of Kwa', we collected data consisting of more than 600 words and expressions adapted from Bouquiaux's questionnaire (1976) and transcribed into IPA. We used F. de Saussure's structural approach through Martinet's functionalist branch (1980) and Bloomfield's distributional branch (1933) to analyze our data. After revisiting the phonological sketch made by Tientcheu Tchameni in 2008, we discovered that the language has 43 phonemes (27 consonants instead of 29, 16 vowels instead of 17) and 5 tonemes, which form the basis for the choice of graphemes of the alphabet. We have also relied on some previous work to highlight the syllabic structure of words, identify the nominal classes (06) and the agreement morphemes of the dependent nouns, and describe summarily the verbal system with regard to tenses, aspects and moods of verbs (05). Concerning the question of standardization of Kwa', we used the process described by Wiesemann et al. (1983) and Sadembouo (2001) to present the dialectal situation of that language, its standardizability, vitality and uniqueness based on intercomprehension between the linguistic varieties of the geographical area under consideration as opposed to bilingualism between Kwa' and neighboring languages. Here, the use of the Cog software made it possible to compare the linguistic varieties and to establish the degree of lexical similarity between Kwa' and neighboring, distant languages (nda'nda' 41.5%, mədʉmbα 40%). It gives scores that make these languages considered as distinct languages. To conclude this analysis, we developed and proposed a number of orthography principles based on the conclusions of the descriptive and sociolinguistic analysis carried out earlier, while following Kay Williamson (1984) on the qualities of good orthography based on fidelity, coherence, practicability/convenience, harmonization and familiarity on the one hand, and on the other hand following the principles of GACL in Tadadjeu and Sadembouo (1984) for the graphization of sounds, tones and words. These orthography principles developed and proposed also include the writing of the nominal / noun prefixes and their themes as a single word, the determinants of the nominals (possessive, demonstrative, etc...) as separate words. Also, compound words as a single word (nda = house + ŋgwɔ̀' = termites -----> ndaŋgwɔ̀' = termite mound), reduplicated words as a single word (nɛnɛp = among themselves), morphophonological adoption and integration of borrowed words, the tenses, aspects and moods markers of verbs as related to the verbal root; i.e. in a single word, but the marker of negation (ka and ki) is separated from the verb. However, all these proposals made need to be adopted and practiced by the speakers of kwa' in order to ensure the viability of the proposed standard orthography and the adequate and reliable writing system for all.

Ce travail portant sur la modernisation systématique d‟une langue bantoue du Cameroun - le yambetta - dans un domaine scientifique, notamment l‟agriculture, a pour objet d‟aider la collectivité yambetta à saisir le sens exact des mots qu‟elle emploie ou dont elle a besoin pour son développement dans le secteur agricole. L‟agriculture est la principale activité qui facilite les conditions de vie dans la communauté yambetta. Les agriculteurs de cette collectivité doivent comprendre et maîtriser le langage agricole diffusé par les médias et relayé par les agents agricoles, pour obtenir un bon rendement dans leur secteur d‟activité. Pour ce faire, il s‟est avéré important de développer la terminologie adéquate à l‟utilisation du yambetta comme médium de transmission des savoirs agricoles modernes, en dotant cette langue d‟un lexique adapté aux réalités du discours agricole et en réalisant la traduction de quelques fiches techniques d‟agriculture en zone rurale. Il s‟agit d‟une recherche sur la traduction non pas seulement en tant que produit, mais aussi et surtout en tant que processus d‟aménagement linguistique, notamment de modernisation, d‟intellectualisation de la langue yambetta. Manifestement, il s‟ensuit que les langues peuvent être différentes les unes des autres sur le plan de la forme, mais chaque terme, chaque message contient un sens ; et c‟est ce sens qui doit être dégagé dans la langue cible. Toutefois, le contexte africain exige une réorientation de l‟activité traduisante. Outre le sens, cette activité doit prendre en compte la diversité culturelle et préserver les besoins identitaires des différentes communautés humaines quelles qu‟elles soient.
Ainsi, cette étude s‟appuie sur les approches culturelles de la terminologie et de la traduction pour moderniser le yambetta dans le secteur agricole, et proposer concomitamment un cadre méthodologique généralisable à la modernisation des langues africaines. Loin d‟être une théorie, la traduction par élaboration terminologique proposée dans cette étude, tributaire de la traduction par simplification terminologique, est une méthode qui relève les limites des simples ouvrages lexicographiques dans la modernisation des langues africaines, en montrant par les textes comment le bon effet sémantique et culturel est attribué aux termes, aux syntagmes, aux énoncés, en fonction du contexte global de communication où ils s‟inscrivent.
Ce projet, qui s‟intègre parfaitement dans l‟un des grands projets de l‟ACALAN, celui sur la terminologie, est une contribution concrète et tangible au grand chantier de l‟équipement et de l‟amélioration du statut de facto des langues africaines, afin qu'elles retrouvent officiellement la place privilégiée qui leur revient dans la construction des États nations et de l'Union africaine.

PLEASE DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS OLDER VERSION OF THE DICTIONARY UNLESS NECESSARY. DOWNLOAD THE NEW 2022 UPDATED AND EXPANDED VERSION - ABOVE ON ACADEMIA.EDU. Following the unexpected discovery in Egypt in September of new unequivocal evidence for the existence of some of the digraphs, a  second proofed, revised and expanded edition is now out.
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By decision of the author and in agreement with the publisher (SAIS) the book is freely put at the disposal of the academic community on 24/10/2017.

In short : The book attempts to demonstrate firstly that digraphs, ancestors of the diphthongs of Coptic, exist in Ancient Egyptian. Secondly, it provides a methodology to vocalize 1795 Ancient Egyptian words.

The book offers a first vocalised dictionary of the Ancient Egyptian language in three parts:  Part I - A dictionary organised according to transliteration (with hieroglyphic term), thereafter English and additional data (vocalisation; source; Coptic descendant(s); notes; main shifts for each term listed, etc.); Part II - A simplified ‹English/Vocalisation/Ancient Egyptian› dictionary; Part III - The dictionary reclassified by V/C/T ratio, i.e. Missing vowel(s) / Apparent consonants and semi-consonants / Total number of phonemes per term. The latter dictionary and attached statistical tables and graph revealing the fundamental discovery that for 55% of Ancient Egyptian words only a single vowel needs to be resituated. The same tables and graph also revealing markingly the phonological frontiers existing between Ancient Egyptian and foreign terms [Extract from the publisher's page : http://saisbooks.co.uk]. Paperback. 424 pages, including 58 pages of presentation, analyses and summary of conclusions. Two statistical graphs and numerous tables, including four for over sixty two Ancient Egyptian phonemes and their equivalent shifts in Coptic. London (UK), 2016. ISBN 978-0-9527827-0-1. £ 79.

In the course of the first half of the 1990s, while still working at the University of Illinois, we worked relatively intensively on Shingazidja, the Comorian languages spoken on the Grand Comoros island. Our consultants were two young men who were studying English at the University of Illinois in preparation for seeking undergraduate degrees in the United States. One of the consultants was particularly adept at recognizing different possible prosodic realizations of sentences and pronouncing the variants in a fashion that was helpful to our non-native ears. This permitted us to particularly focus on the accentual structure of the language. Although we published a number of articles on the topic, much of the material we assembled remained unpublished. The departure of our consultants and our own move to Tel Aviv, effectively ended our data collection. Over the subsequent years, we analyzed a fair bit of the material we had assembled and started to prepare a lexicon of Shingazidja, but one that focus on the tonal structure. Each entry identified the tonal structure of a word in isolation and then illustrated its use in a variety of phrases and sentences, all of which were tonally marked. The present "Contribution to the Study of Shingazija" contains a draft of this project as it existed in 2010. By then, the second author had retired from Tel Aviv University and returned to the United States permanently, but he found himself soon immersed in returning to projects that had been begun in the 1970s: the study of Chimiini and Emakhuwa. There seems little likelihood that we will do new work on Shingazidja, so we are making this 210 draft lexicon available. We have made no corrections or additions to the draft.

Proverbs are representative of the world view of the native speakers of a language. In most African communities, the elders are well versed in the use of proverbs and are seen as the custodians of their culture. This implies that African proverbs are an in Delta states of Nigeria, both located in the Niger delta region of the country. As a result of the creation of more states in Nigeria, Urhobo has assumed a , taking into cognizance the fact tha with a Subject-Object-Verb word order while Urhobo is an Edoid language with a Subject-Verb-Object word order. It examines the differences that occur in terms of sentence structure, phonological and morphological processes, cultural contexts, as well as sociolinguistic variations. Using the linguistic approach to translation, the paper highlights the processes involved in translating from a minor language into a language of limited diffusion, thus establishing the fact that translation between both languages is possible. Dynamic equivalence is adopted where proverbs of the Source Language (SL) are not identical with those of the Target Language (TL) due to contextual differences. The study uses five (5) selected SL proverbs to illustrate intercultural transfer in the translation process.