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The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Cameroon. The most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa, a lingua franca of much of inland Eastern West Africa.
Hausa is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people in the northern half of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern half of Niger, Chad and Sudan, with significant minorities in Ivory Coast.
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
A lingua franca, also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.
Kanuri is a dialect continuum spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, as well as in small minorities in southern Libya and by a diaspora in Sudan.
Borno State is a state in the North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, bordered by Yobe to the west, Gombe to the southwest, and Adamawa to the south while its eastern border forms part of the national border with Cameroon, its northern border forms part of the national border with Niger, and its northeastern border forms all of the national border with Chad, being the only Nigerian state to border three foreign countries. It takes its name from the historic emirate of Borno, with the emirate's old capital of Maiduguri serving as the capital city of Borno State. The state was formed in 1976 when the former North-Eastern State was broken up. It originally included the area that is now Yobe State, which became a distinct state in 1991.
Macro-Jê is a medium-sized language stock in South America, mostly in Brazil but also in the Chiquitanía region in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, as well as (formerly) in small parts of Argentina and Paraguay. It is centered on the Jê language family, with most other branches currently being single languages due to recent extinctions.
Arawakan, also known as Maipurean, is a language family that developed among ancient indigenous peoples in South America. Branches migrated to Central America and the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean and the Atlantic, including what is now the Bahamas. Almost all present-day South American countries are known to have been home to speakers of Arawakan languages, the exceptions being Ecuador, Uruguay, and Chile. Maipurean may be related to other language families in a hypothetical Macro-Arawakan stock.
Chadian Arabic, also known as Shuwa Arabic, Baggara Arabic, Western Sudanic Arabic, or West Sudanic Arabic (WSA), is a variety of Arabic and the first language of 1.6 million people, both town dwellers and nomadic cattle herders. The majority of its speakers live in southern Chad. Its range is an east-to-west oval in the Sahel. Nearly all of this territory is within Chad or Sudan. It is also spoken elsewhere in the vicinity of Lake Chad in the countries of Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger. Finally, it is spoken in slivers of the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In addition, this language serves as a lingua franca in much of the region. In most of its range, it is one of several local languages and often not among the major ones.
István Kecskés is a Distinguished Professor of the State University of New York, USA. He teaches graduate courses in pragmatics, second language acquisition and bilingualism at SUNY, Albany. He is the President of the American Pragmatics Association (AMPRA) and the CASLAR Association. He is the founder and co-director of the Barcelona Summer School on Bi- and Multilingualism, and the founder and co-director of Sorbonne, Paris – SUNY, Albany Graduate Student Symposium (present).
Bure, also known as Bubbure, is an Afro-Asiatic language belonging to the Bole-Tangale group of the West branch of the Chadic family. It is spoken in northern Nigeria in the village of Bure and in some small settlements nearby. The language is used mostly by a very few speakers, of great-grandparental generation. Except for Hausa, which is lingua franca in the area, Bure is surrounded by other Chadic languages such as Gera, Giiwo and Deno . Compared to other languages of the same group, the endangerment of Bure is by far the most critical.
English as a lingua franca (ELF) is the use of the English language "as a global means of inter-community communication" and can be understood as "any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice and often the only option". ELF is "defined functionally by its use in intercultural communication rather than formally by its reference to native-speaker norms" whereas English as a second or foreign language aims at meeting native speaker norms and gives prominence to native speaker cultural aspects. While lingua francas have been used for centuries, what makes ELF a novel phenomenon is the extent to which it is used in spoken, written and in computer-mediated communication. ELF research focuses on the pragmatics of variation which is manifest in the variable use of the resources of English for a wide range of globalized purposes, in important formal encounters such as business transactions, international diplomacy and conflict resolution, as well as in informal exchanges between international friends.
Scott DeLancey is an American linguist from the University of Oregon. His work focuses on typology and historical linguistics of Tibeto-Burman languages as well as North American indigenous languages such as the Penutian family, particularly the Klamath. His research is known for its diversity of its thematic and theoretical reach.
Medefaidrin (Medefidrin), or Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ, is a constructed language and script created as a Christian sacred language by an Ibibio congregation in 1930s Nigeria. It has its roots in glossolalia.
Jennifer Jenkins, FAcSS is a British linguist and academic. She is Chair Professor of Global Englishes at the University of Southampton. She is a leading figure in the study of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and is an expert on communication in English between non-native speakers. This is a relatively new field of study and her opinions are sometimes seen as controversial. Her interests include attitudes to the international range of "Englishes", English as a lingua franca in higher education, and the implications of ELF for ways of teaching English as a foreign language. She has published and lectured widely and is a founder editor of the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca.
Luke William Harding is an Australian linguist. He is currently a professor at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of Lancaster University, United Kingdom. His research focuses on language assessment with a special focus on listening assessment, pronunciation assessment, and diagnostic language assessment. He is the current editor-in-chief of the journal, Language Testing.
Herrmann Rudolf Jungraithmayr is an Austrian Africanist and retired university professor. Until 1996, he was the chair of African linguistics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Henri Ramirez is a French-Brazilian linguist known especially for his research on Arawakan languages and other language families of the Amazonian region. He is currently a professor at the Federal University of Rondônia, Guajará-Mirim.
Norbert Cyffer is a German-Austrian linguist and Professor Emeritus of African Studies at the University of Vienna. Cyffer is primarily interested in African languages and linguistics, particularly the Saharan languages of the Sahelian region. His research areas include morphology, syntax, language contact, sociolinguistics, typology, and applied linguistics.
References
- ↑ "In memoriam Prof. Conrad Max Benedict Brann". Deutsche Vertretungen in Nigeria (in German). Archived from the original on 11 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
- ↑ ""Nigeria: Professor Brann - A European in the Service of Local Languages" Daily Trust via AllAfrica.com, 13 December 2008".
