"There was a time when any native language spoken in Africa was contemptuously referred to as a 'tongue', 'dialect', 'patois' or 'vernacular', etc. Nowadays the trend is to refer to any African speech form as a 'distinct language', irrespective of the mutual intelligibility between the speakers, and/or the high degree of genetic relationship between these speech forms. Thus, most African languages are not properly identified." *
This is from the English abstract for an article published by Hounkpatin C. Capo in 1983. It is interesting to reflect on his evaluation of the situation a quarter century later in the context of discussions of language encoding and all. In a way, not a lot has changed from the situation Prof. Capo described. Yes there has been a lot of work done and some non-African experts are more savvy to the complexity of the language situation. But we are still looking at ways of categorizing languages that leave out a lot of information about the relationships among groups of languages/dialects. Part of that is the state of knowledge; part of that arguably is the reductionist nature of categorizing (i.e., things can be reduced to discrete parts). A major new dynamic at the moment of course is internationalization and localization, and it both challenges us with its need for structured ways of interpreting the handling of many languages and multilingual data, and runs smack into issues of interintelligibility and how to treat tongues that are close but not quite the same. It sometimes seems that no single way of categorizing languages responds to all the questions. Maybe in order to "properly identify" and categorize African languages for ICT, we need to admit that there are multiple realities for which different systems or frames of reference might apply. At the same time, however, there has to be some sense, commonly agreed on, as to how those all fit together. This is an area which needs collaboration among linguists and technicians and policymakers. In some cases, the possibilities offered by ICT might encourage development of standard terminologies and, where they are not already set, standard orthographies. This won't happen in isolation from other work with languages or ICT, and it will require resources (of course) in addition to skilled people. Maybe, we are coming to a point of "African Languages 3.0." "African Languages 1.0" would be the period Prof. Capo mentions first. This also was the period - mainly the colonial era - of the first formal linguistic studies of many languages. "African Languages 2.0" then would be the post-independence era of more respect, as well as more systematic research on the languages that tended, as Prof. Capo points out, to emphasize differences in its detailed documentation. In the meantime there have been scholars emphasizing the commonality of related tongues, among them Profs. Capo, Prah (of CASAS) and others - an alternative position in the period of African Languages 2.0 (African Languages 2.5?). Now we are arguably at a point - 3.0 - where a number of new elements, notably ICT, seem to change the whole environment. Talk in the abstract will no longer suffice (however useful it may continue to be in some respects). The needs in terms not only of ICT but education, and development communication, seem to demand applied solutions and well thought-out plans for languages. These cannot come from outside, even while they might need outside resources and of course communication in the areas of ICT and internationalization. And there is probably no single game plan that will guide action in all cases - linguistic realities differ by their nature among languages, countries, regions. What does "African Languages 3.0" mean in practice? This could be several things. One is simply the understanding that "splitting" (per Ethnologue) and "lumping" (per CASAS) are both valid ways of understanding the complex and changing tapestry of African languages. Another is standardization - the setting, where they do not exist, of a common version for at least some sorts of uses. What are possibly "beta versions" are Runyakitara or N'Ko. Each in different ways are attempts to provide a diverse but unified speech community with a version of their language for use in education, publishing, etc. Systems of categorization that treat the component closely related "languages" in the same way they would Mongolian and Basque - i.e., as discrete entities - do not facilitate such efforts. How this will all play out we shall see, but there does seem to be a great need for 1) more language planning within Africa, and 2) integrating African experts on African languages in the processes of elaborating systems of categorization for ICT. I.e., "African Languages 3.0" is, or should be, primarily African. Sounds obvious, but Africa was occupied during 1.0, and did not seem to shape the discourse in 2.0. All the above is very simplified, but those are the thoughts I have coming across that particular passage. Don Osborn Bisharat.net PanAfrican Localisation project * Capo, Hounkpatin C. (1983), "Le Gbe est une langue unique," Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 53(2): 47-57 abstract and first page available at http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-972053%3A2%3C47%3ALGEULU%3E2.0.CO%3B2- 2 or http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-9720(1983)53%3A2%3C47%3ALGEULU%3E2.0.C O%3B2-2 Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
