This document discusses the impact of globalization and colonialism on languages in Africa. It notes that while over 2,500 languages are spoken in Africa, 48 of 57 African countries have adopted European languages like English, French, and Portuguese as official languages. However, the author argues this endangers local identities and cultures. The document examines factors that have led to the dominance of foreign languages, like colonialism and attitudes among some African parents who refuse to teach their children native languages. It warns that losing local languages could result in "the linguistic extermination" and complete loss of cultural identity for many Africans.

1. English and the African
Identity
Globalization or a lost identity?
Mr Baraka Abdellah
University of Mascara Algeria
dailynews02@yahoo.fr

2. English is the mother tongue
of about half a billion people
on the planet .
375 million second language
speakers
750 million foreign language
speakers

3. Official language in at least
75 countries
Most books, reports and
communications are often
published in English.

4. WHY?

5. British colonialism is
certainly a major cause.

6. English is the language of
the United States.
The country that brought
this debatable term of
globalization or
Americanisation.

7. Africa makes no exception to
the rule.
However the situation is
quite complicated.

8. English as an official
language in 21 countries.

9. French as an official
language in 22 African
countries.

10. Portuguese as an official
language in 05 countries.

11. 48 African countries out of 57
adopted foreign languages as
official languages.

12. Yet,

13. Out of 6703 world
languages, 2582 languages
and 1382 dialects are found
in Africa.

14. 105 million people in
Nigeria speak 410
languages.
30 million people in
Democratic Republic of
Congo use 206 languages

15. Ethiopia has 97 languages
for a population of 45
million,
In Cameroon 185 languages
are used by 8 million
inhabitants.

16. 58 languages for 3 million
inhabitants in Benin,
31 languages for two
million in Congo
Brazzaville.

17. 120 languages for 28 million
inhabitants in Tanzania.
12 languages in Mali for a
population of 9 million.

18. The European colonisation
and the American progress
may explain this linguistic
phenomenon.

19. However, the Africans’
attitudes towards their
languages is another
factor to be considered.

20. A common assumption is
that people’s mother
tongue is essentially
people’s ethno cultural
identity.

29. The modernisation and
globalisation at the expense
of languages and identities.

30. New social conceptions and
beliefs : a child expressing
himself in French or English,
speaks his native language!

31. Children not allowed to
learn their native language.
Yet, parents regularly use it
with other people

32. African child, deliberately
deprived of his true native
language, culture and
identity, will constitute,
tomorrow, a completely lost
Africa.

33. Many parents in Africa use
only French or English with
their children .

34. The English was proclaimed
language of the babies.

35. The parents often use their
native language, but when
they address their children
they shift spontaneously to
English.

36. To justify, African parents
pretend :

37. The African children are
already born being
English-speaking.

38. Some parents do not
share both the same
native language.

39. Children will always end up
speaking their native
language.

40. English will enable
children to communicate
with the external world.

41. Without English the child
will face many troubles at
school.

42. Most parents’ arguments
are wrong.

43. The child will never
acquire a language
without being exposed to
it.

44. Sooner or later the child
will learn the foreign
languages at school.

45. Communicating with a
child in his native language
would a not prevent the
parents to use English in
parallel.

46. The majority of the parents
have a very bad English.
The child will have all the
troubles of the world to
learn the correct school
English.

47. Why do people in Africa
refuse the Africanity of
their children?
Is it what we refer to as the
parental neo-colonialism.

48. Africans fear the darkness
of their past .
They wish to reach that
light of modernisation, but
surely at the expense of
many social and national
entities.

49. To kill a language is to kill an
identity.
This is what we may refer to
“The linguistic extermination”

50. The disappearance of a
language is not sudden.
 The first indicator / people
start not to use their native
language or they give it up
for another one.

51. Language disappearing or
extermination: 4 stages

52. Social elite / completely bilingual
The mass / unilingual
The urban population / gradually bilingual
The rural population / unilingual
The urban areas/towards a growing bilingualism
The rural areas / welcoming bilingualism
The whole society shifts heavily towards unilingualism

53. Linguistically speaking,
the language disappears
by transformation.

54. The phonetic system of the dominated language
melts slowly in the dominant language.
Its sentences will reflect those of the other
language.
Its vocabulary is gradually absorbed

55. However,the language is
not a biological organism .

56. It is a social reality

57. The history witnessed
that a language can be
weak because of strong
language.

58. Thus, in the eighth century,
English has almost
disappeared in favor of the
Norse Vikings.

59. They had only a few
battles to fight for
complete elimination of
the Anglo-Saxons.

60. English remained weak
until the seventeenth
century and many experts,
at the time, had even
predicted its imminent
death.

61. So, it’s obvious that the
assimilation process, a
prelude to the death of a
language, may be stopped
evolving.

62. The non-use of the mother
tongue will provoke a loss of
both linguistic ability and
cultural identity.

63. The loss of the African
cultural identity is the
result of a power that
works in favor of a
dominant language

64. History shows us that only
people who have a cultural
weight based on strong and
stable institutions, a
network of schools and
writing traditions, manage
to survive, even after being
conquered by arms.

65. Asante sana na kwaheri

66. Thankyou very mush
and good-bye