# Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger (Third Edition)/Sub-Saharan Africa

​Sub-Saharan Africa
Matthias Brenzinger and Herman Batibo
Sub-Saharan Africa includes about one-third of the world’s languages. Today, Africans still communicate in over 2,000 languages that represent a significant part of the world’s language diversity and display great typological variation.
Up to 10 per cent of the African languages – especially those spoken by small speech communities – may disappear within the next hundred years. Most of them are among the 2,500 or so languages included in this Atlas. Over 100 other languages exist only by name, which is why they have been omitted from our endangered language overview.
In addition to those small speech communities scattered over the continent, there are high-risk areas for languages and their speakers. The most widespread threat to African language diversity, however, has still not been documented adequately by scholars and has also been left out of this survey: the slow drift of hundreds of languages whenever genetically related languages are in contact. Batibo (2005), for example, describes Zaramo as slowly giving way to Swahili in spite of its ethnic population of over 200,000 people. Not even the speakers themselves are aware of the loss of their languages, and African languages still generally considered to be spoken by 100,000 people might in fact have almost disappeared.
In contrast, quite a number of major African languages are vital and are even gaining speakers: some by being acquired as additional languages, others by spreading at the expense of African vernaculars. In general, English and French – the ex-colonial languages for most of the continent – are not displacing African languages, at least not at this point in time. It is African languages that are replacing other African languages.
​The African language market
The continental language market consists of more than 2,000 ethnic languages, i.e. vernaculars spoken as first languages by African speech communities. The approximately 100 international, national, regional and local lingua francas, i.e. media of wider or inter-ethnic communication, are generally acquired as additional languages and some of them are spoken by several million people.
The mother tongues of Africans are generally African languages, if we consider Afrikaans and the various creoles among them. Languages that are employed as lingua francas are either African vernaculars that have expanded beyond their ethnic groups, such as Hausa (West Africa), Wolof (Senegal) and Amharic (Ethiopia), or pidgins and creoles. The latter are of two basic types, namely those based on African languages, such as Lingala (mainly Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo} and Kituba (Democratic Republic of the Congo}, and those based on European languages, such as Krio (Sierra Leone} and Nigerian Pidgin English (Nigeria), as well as the different variants of French (Céte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, etc.}. Many of these pidgin languages are not only gaining speakers through urbanization and other forms of modern mobility, but increasingly receiving recognition. In Nigeria, Nigerian Pidgin English has developed into a creole and is replacing other African languages as a new mother tongue. Pidgins and creoles are the youngest and fastest-growing languages on the continent and will play important roles as replacing languages.
If, in the 1960s, European languages were commonly acquired in sub-Saharan Africa as additional languages, mainly by members of the elites, this is no longer the general rule today. In countries with a strong urbanization rate, like Gabon in Central Africa, French has become a lingua franca spoken by everybody and even a mother tongue for many children in cities. The large number of African vernaculars have survived for several reasons, including the still prevailing subsistence economy, but also because of widespread poverty and the marginalization of rural communities. The job market is still very limited and people usually make their living within their communities. Community structures in pressurized social units generally demand that their members conform to social norms, with proficiency in the heritage language being a basic requirement.
African societies and individuals are commonly multilingual; many people use more than four or five languages in their daily lives. The multilingual arrangements in which different languages are assigned to specific domains and functions are still fairly stable. From their individual language repertoires, speakers may pick different languages for communicating at home, at the market, at school, at church or in the mosque.
The contexts of language displacement
In sub-Saharan Africa, not only languages but often the speakers themselves are threatened by external forces such as military, economic, religious, cultural or educational pressures. Some of these external pressures develop into internal forces, such as a community's negative attitude towards its own language, or into a general decline of group identity. Together, these forces jeopardize the intergenerational transmission of linguistic and cultural traditions. Poverty and marginalization are often associated with ethnolinguistic minorities and ​their languages. For that reason, parents in these communities often decide to bring up their children in other languages than their own. By doing so, they hope to overcome discrimination, attain equality of opportunity and derive economic benefits for themselves and their children.
The scenarios in which African languages are at present being replaced range from subnational to national and regional contexts, and finally to environments that are formed by processes associated with globalization. To understand the dynamics of language displacement, it is necessary to consider the specific contexts in which language shifts occur.
In a regional or international context, African languages of wider communication have spread as languages of trade, work, the army or religion, or along with rapid urbanization. In West Africa, change in religious affiliation, for example, has resulted in shifts to new mother tongues, languages that are associated with a new religion: Hausa in Nigeria and neighbouring countries; and, further west, Dyula, which spread along with Islam on a wider regional scale. Economically disadvantaged communities seem to be better off as part of a wider, Hausa- or Dyula-speaking Muslim society. In East Africa, Swahili is another language that has long been associated with Islam. It is evident from many of its expressions that the language is one of the agents of the spread of the faith. Islamized communities in East Africa often shift to Swahili and abandon their ethnic languages. As a result of an improved infrastructure that allows for greater mobility, Bambara in West Africa, Lingala in Central Africa and many other regional languages seem to expand and grow stronger by the day.
On the level of national states, governments obviously rely on the languages in which they run their countries. National majority languages are used in administration and politics, science and education, as well as literature and the media. After independence, the governments of sub-Saharan African countries generally declared the ex-colonial languages, namely English, French and Portuguese, as the official state languages. This policy is still in force today, with governments arguing that these foreign languages are non-ethnic and allow access to the world. By using them, African governments have tried to put into practice the nineteenth-century European ideology of ‘one nation – one people – one language’. In the same context of national states, however, we also find African languages that are established as ‘official languages’ or at least as officially recognized ‘national languages’. In such settings, where national loyalty is associated with speaking the national tongue, ethnolinguistic minorities are frequently unable to resist these outside pressures.
Swahili in the United Republic of Tanzania, Setswana in Botswana, Sango in the Central African Republic, Wolof in Senegal and Bambara in Mali, to list but a few, are among the few African languages that have developed into media of nationwide communication. Swahili and Setswana, in particular, have been described as threats to all other languages of the respective national states. Thus, Swahili threatens more than 130 Tanzanian languages, while Setswana does the same to about 30 languages spoken in Botswana. The pressure from these two languages is subtle, however, and the effects on language endangerment are difficult to ascertain. The replacement of languages in these contexts is more of a drift than a language shift. It will probably not even be noticed until it is too late. Very few languages are considered endangered in the United Republic of Tanzania, although it could be argued that a vast number in the coastal hinterland are already losing their younger speakers to Swahili.
​Sudan is not only the largest, but also one of the linguistically most diverse countries on the African continent. Well over 100 languages are spoken, in addition to which, Arabic has been used as a lingua franca in many parts of the country during the past two centuries. Since independence, the national policy has aimed at ‘Sudanization’, implying a reduction of ethnic and linguistic multiplicity. Today, a great number of speech communities are dispersed, many to urban areas. The younger members no longer speak their heritage languages, but Arabic instead.
Although a more liberal policy was officially declared in 2004, there have been few real changes in regard to the policy of ‘Sudanization’.
Most African minority languages are still threatened in subnational contexts, and language displacement in sub-Saharan Africa occurs mostly in these contexts. Such language shift takes place in local contact situations and for quite different reasons, sorne of which are mentioned briefly below.
African languages replace African languages
On a subnational or local level, language shifts in Africa seem to occur simultaneously with shifts to value systems of other African communities. Over the past decades, several hunter-gatherer communities have assimilated and taken on the languages of pastoral societies. In these societies, the possession of livestock is of primary importance and hunter-gatherers are looked down upon as people without cattle. Former hunter-gatherer communities, such as the Yaaku, Aasax and Akie, have abandoned their heritage languages and adopted the Maa language along with the pastoral way of life. The younger generations of these former hunter-gatherers are pastoralists and now share the prejudice towards ‘poor people without cattle’, in other words, they look down on their own ancestors, and sometimes even their elders.
Each language shift has its own unique setting, history and dynamics. According to Cronk (2004), bride-wealth inflation, for example, has led the once-foraging Yaaku to change first their subsistence patterns, and finally their ethnic and linguistic identity. When Yaaku girls began marrying neighbouring pastoralists, the parents received livestock as bride-wealth, not only beehives as had been the Yaaku custom. This made it necessary for young Yaaku men to acquire cattle, too, since Yaaku fathers demanded cattle as bride-wealth from then on. Hunter-gatherers were considered poor, and in order to found families, young Yaaku men had to become pastoralists and adopt the Maa language. Other examples can be mentioned, for instance, in Gabon, where hunter-gatherer communities such as the Babongo have switched to the languages of their neighbours (Masango, Tsogo, Simba, etc.}, the Bakoya to Ungom, the Makina (Shiwa) to Fang, and the Sekiani to Mpongwe.
In similar contexts, small communities are currently taking over the languages of their immediate neighbours, languages that are often themselves spoken only by small speech communities. In southern Ethiopia, ‘Ongota (Birale) is being replaced by Ts’amakko (Ts’arnay}, Kwegu (Koegu) by Mursi, Shabo by Majang and Harro by Bayso. Language is the main indicator for group identity, and the ‘Ongota people today survive as Ts’amay; of course, in order to become Ts'amay they need to speak Ts’amakko.
​Other subnational contexts in which languages disappear locally are triggered by drastic changes in the physical environment. The East African Rift Valley runs all the way from Ethiopia to South Africa and has many lakes on its valley bottom. Several distinct languages have exclusively been spoken on islands found in some of these lakes, but it seems that they might soon disappear. The introduction of new fish species for commercial production has resulted in a dramatic decrease of tilapia and other indigenous fish species in the lakes; the latter used to make up the main catch in the subsistence fishing of the islanders. Zay people in Lake Zway, Bayso and Harro in Lake Abaya of Ethiopia, and Elmolo in Lake Turkana of Kenya left their islands because fishing no longer provided a living. In their new environments, the children of these communities are growing up together with dominant neighbours. Language shift has already led to the extinction of their language in the case of Elmolo, and serious threats to language transmission have been described for Zay and Harro. Bayso is still spoken, but no longer by all children, and this small speech community will have to deal with increased pressure in the future.
The correlation between language and religious affiliation involving regional languages has already been mentioned, but there are also local settings in which this factor leads to the abandonment of languages. The Jeri leatherworkers live among the Sienare Senufo in the northern part of Cdte d'woire. The community has abandoned its own language, and Kastenholz (1998) found that the Jeri have adopted two different languages as their new mother tongues according to their religious affiliation: Sienare by the non-Muslims, and Manding by the Muslim Jeri.
As already mentioned, African governments continue to use the languages of the ex-colonial powers. These are still the prevailing languages in national administration, in secondary and higher education, and in modern literature. However, some of the stongest threats to African linguistic diversity are probably due to other factors.
Threats to linguistic diversity in Africa
This Atlas provides an overview of endangered and recently vanished languages. The maps of sub-Saharan Africa show a high concentration of endangered languages north of and along the Equator, more or less in the geographical centre of the continent. This high occurrence of endangered languages is mainly due to the fact that it is here that the greatest number of African languages are spoken.
Threats to linguistic diversity, however, are by no means restricted to the number of threatened languages, as their genetic status is obviously of crucial importance. The extinction of languages belonging to small language families and the disappearance of linguistic isolates have a serious impact on overall linguistic diversity.
In 1963 Joseph Greenberg classified the African languages into four major phyla – Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Khoisan – by claiming a genetic relationship for all members belonging to one of these ‘super families’ (Greenberg, 1963}. Although most scholars still use these four units, the validity of the genetic claim has been challenged. Genetic groupings, which may rightly be referred to as families, have more recently been broken down into much smaller units.
The entire Khoisan phylum, today commonly used as an areal-typological unit, must be considered endangered, as most Khoisan languages are now spoken only by small and marginalized former ​hunter-gatherer communities. Their living conditions no longer allow them sustenance in their traditional ways of life. Thus, acculturation and language shift are widespread among most of the speech communities.
Other endangered language families are the Kordofanian languages in Sudan and the Kuliak languages in Uganda, as all member languages are spoken by small communities, who live in quite hostile environments.
Among the endangered or extinct languages that are considered unclassified linguistic isolates, a large number are known only by name, and for that reason have not been included in our overview. Studies are available for ‘Ongota and Shabo in southern Ethiopia, Hadza in the United Republic of Tanzania, Laal in Chad, and Kwadi in Angola; the last of these, however, became extinct over fifty years ago.
The outlook
In sub-Saharan Africa, languages of ethnolinguistic minorities have survived in large numbers because of continued marginalization of their speakers. But what has saved them until now is about to turn against them. Nettle and Romaine (2000) consider lack of access to economic resources to be the fundamental determinant of language shift and language death in modern times.
Even rural communities in remote areas of Africa no longer exist in isolation, and probably very few did so in the past. Poverty is not only a growing threat to languages spoken by ethnolinguistic minorities, but may become the prime criterion for abandoning one’s own language. If a community’s own languages are not made economically and socially valuable, it will abandon them as soon as it has the opportunity to make progress in modern economic and socio-political life. In order to maintain and perpetuate Africa’s linguistic diversity, the speakers of these languages must find valid economic and cultural reasons for keeping their ancestral languages as vital media in natural everyday communication with their offspring.
Endangered African sign languages
African sign languages are still rarely documented, and the following information derives mainly from the works of Nyst (2007) and Kamei (2006). Local African sign languages have developed in urban as well as rural settings, and with very few exceptions, such as Hausa Sign Language in northern Nigeria, they are severely threatened. Formal deaf education is conducted in national sign languages that are based on foreign, imported sign languages, mostly American Sign Language (ASL). Just as with spoken languages, these national sign languages are spreading at the expense of local African versions. Especially with the introduction of boarding schools, in which children no longer live within their own communities but come together from all parts of the country, deaf education in national sign languages puts heavy pressure on local sign languages.
Some African sign languages were established in urban settings: examples are Mbour Sign Language in the town of Mbour in Senegal, Mali Sign Language in Bamako and Hausa Sign Language in the town of Kano in northern Nigeria. Others developed in rural settings where a high incidence of deafness made signing the natural form of communication, even with hearing members of the community, such as in south-east Ghana with Adamorobe Sign Language. Finally, there are local African sign languages used by small communities or extended families, such as Nanabin Sign Language in Ghana, Bura Sign Language in northern Nigeria and Tebul Ure Sign Language in the Dogon region of Mali; the last two have been briefly documented by Blench and Nyst (2003).