Detroit evening times. (Detroit, Mich) 1921-1958, 1943-04-25

T HE two words Africa
L Speaks" were never taken
u very seriously in this country,
but now, because Of the turn Of
world events, it suddenly becomes
important for many people Of our
country TO understand what the
Dark Continent is saying and has
been thinking these many years.
In order to make the strange
native languages available to in
creasing numbers of military
men, Government representatives
and others who are going to need
them, scholars at the Uni
versity of Pennsylvania, under
the direction OF a talented lin.
gust, DR.. Zellig Harris, are now
hard at work. The University of
Pennsylvania is the only college
in the country where African is
taught.
There are upwards Of 40, 900, 900
people living on the African con-
tinent and ii is only natural that
they should speak a number of
languages. It is also true that
five years ago there were, at the
most, 20 people in our land who
could speak any of these native
tongues.
Today the situation ha s
changed and suddenly there are
students of African tongues who
want teachers. A few years ago,
the American Council of Learned |
Societies, which is part of the
Rockefeller Foundation, guessing, |
apparently, that the war might |
well spread to the Dark Continent |
set up a department for African
languages at the University of |
Pennsylvania which today has as
many as ten pupils in class.
Naturally, there were no fac
ulty members ready to teach
African languages, for the pro-
fessors at that time did not even
know the names of the dialects,
let alone their alphabets. These
teachers, however, set to work to
find natives whom they could use
as textbooks and decided to
instruct the students in three ma
tive tongues. Swahili, Fanti and
Hausa.
Different student investigators,
working under DR.. Harris, spe-
cialize in one language. The stu
dent asks his native teacher, who
is called his informant, how to
say simple words like mother"
father" market place" or
phrases like II am hungry" Then
he records the pronunciation and .
probable spelling in English on
neat white cards. In this way in.
vestigators are now constructing |
simple grammars. phrase books,
and dictionaries in languages that
no one except missionaries or
traders ever concerned themselves /
with before.
IN Tunisia, Algeria and |
Morocco says Or. Harris. mo /
roccan Arabic is the most usual |
tongue. About 100000 people |
speak It. Hausa is spoken by
about 20,000,000. in the region .
from Nigeria 10 the Sudan, includ- /
ing southern Sahara and French .
Equatorial Africa. Swahili is
used by about 100000 and is
heard only in the interior-in the I
Belgian Congo. Fanti is used by
about 1000, 900 on the Gold Coast
This already makes $1,000, 900 .
people, but that is not an error.
since many in Africa speak four
languages 49,.
There really are about 40 or 80
languages spoken on the CON
tinent Of Africa but we are TAX
ing only the big commercial ones.
swahni for instance. is related
TO Zulu and belongs TO the Ian
guage family called Bantu."
At present, the native "in.
formants" at the University of
Pennsylvania are Francis n.
Nkrumah, nephew of the Adadi
of Nsuaem, who rules 5000 ma
tives on the Gold Coast of West
Africa where Fanti is spoken.
Olaf More Akeisa, of Nigeria
who is the informant" on Hausa
and was lecturing on African