Dear Professor Harrow & Gloria in Excelsis Emeagwali,
Serendipity: I'm trying to hit two birds (Harrow & Emeagwali) with one stone. Quite a different proposition altogether from what my Yoruba mentor described as our good friend "trying to make chicken out of feather" which he said could be a form of "English magic". No - I told him - that's more like twenty-first century English poetry, making chickens out of yuba feathers.
There is of course body language (also cultural) an adjunct to our expressing what we mean and how we feel...
Noteworthy: Dany Laferrière - after Senghor , the second dark person to be elected to the Académie Française !
I listened attentively to the Rabbi this evening, talking about modesty in general and Modesty in dress and speech too , so I'm doing my utmost to avoid committing Ęyin l'ohùn' and lashon hara which is as difficult as being non-judgemental when operating in political spheres which are often densely populated by a class of egotistical idiots who call themselves politicians - serpents - among whom we find others who call themselves journalists. Methinks that one of the best ways of avoiding lashon hara per se (of the brain and not the heart) could be by deploying understatement (very British) for effect - rather than the characteristic chest-beating bluster, thunder and lightning of Naija Inglishi and the grammar of poetry...
So many English words being imported into the Swedish language. Yesterday I read this article ( in the original Swedish of course) about Harry Schein in the Culture pages of Dagens Nyheter and came across the word approcherad ( approached) for the very first time. And Anglicization of the Swedish language.
Re - one of Israel's most impressive feats to date : The miracle revival of the Hebrew Language sometimes said to be on par with the Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea
We have been given to understand (from some reliable sources) that the resurrections of the Hebrew sometimes had to go to the etymologies of some words in Arabic to get to the Hebrew source
I read sometime ago that one of Sierra Leone's twenty six languages Krim died a long time ago - not that it had fallen into desuetude but because there was not a sufficient number of speakers to maintain it. From that point of view, some languages are on life support - happily, e. g. Yoruba is not it is a spoken and written language with diacritical markings etc. - although my complaint is that if the current forms are not plentifully recorded in writing and in speech the riches in the current forms might also be lost to posterity. Some of my Santeria friends tell me that the liturgies of their Cuban babalawos are in an older form of Yoruba which Nigerian Babalawos of today may not be so familiar with; but I doubt this, for the simple reason that I imagine their liturgies , incantations etc. must go back a long long way in time. But maybe there are innovations by the modernisers? Another reason why contemporary Naija English had better be captured and distributed in print and in music - as the language evolves ( the guitar for example has its own language in which we speak - the blues, flamenco, jazz, soukous etc. and is definitely evolving, I suppose , as is the standard English of the Naija Delta...
One last little thing : re- a continental lingua franca - for Africa and for Europe too, I'm wondering, whatever happened with ESPERANTO - at least I read and understood some of the long surahs in the Quran in the Quran in Esperanto with the minimum of difficulty, but the spirit of the Quran is surely in the Arabic - "that inimitable symphony the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy."
For those who could be interested: Teach English : Cambridge REFL courses, Amsterdam Center :
Cornelius
On Monday, 20 March 2017 18:51:35 UTC+1, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
I've heard that gaelic is declining in Ireland, despite its creation as a national language along w the irish revival.
Why do we speak as we do? Not because the state mandates such and such, but because we want to communicate with others. Eventually languages die off—a very sad fact, but it goes with the loss of species as well. There are factors that play into these choices that seem quite complex to me. What is the ecology of language as spoken?
Lastly, Israel created a national language, Hebrew, that had not been a spoken language since ancient times, except for temple worship. It survived, alongside English, but my impression is that English has declined there, in favor of all Hebrew speaking.
And a guess: Arabic speaking in Israel probably declined as the borders got shut off.
Simultaneously, I am pretty sure Spanish has increased in northern morocco since so many more Spanish tourists come down.
These are not factors govts control.
Last I looked france had 70-80 million tourists. Someone has to speak to them when they want to buy things. And French is not the common language.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/
people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@
googlegroups.com > on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com >
Date: Monday 20 March 2017 at 10:54
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com >
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Bad News: Another rumble in the dark jungle (in the Naija swamp)
"When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety "( Lyrics)"In Language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned" (Maxims)
Or Jane Austen : "It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language" ( Northanger Abbey)
Except that this correction of banalities such as "An advice," "a good news", errors of Pluralization in Nigerian English" etc. as a necessity - nyet - a priority and a good part of development strategy should be no laughing matter. It's OK developing British and American English , but charity they say begins at home - so what about our own Nigerian English - doesn't it have a soul of its own? (Sure, sleeping giant, overweight elephant, the Eagle soars - not like "His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar" (Ellis)
So (as always) - from the point of view of some of the privileged elitists
(those who correct our broken English on a daily basis )
it has come to the point where it's a matter of the survival of the fittest:
Just like the African elephant, indigenous African Languages are now endangered species !
One would have thought that our indigenous African languages are part of the world's / humanity's intellectual and cultural heritage - on par with the UNESCO world heritage sites and consequently, that indigenous African languages have to be developed !
UNESCO : indigenous African languages have to be developed
Here's a disheartening headline : 'More than 400 Nigerian indigenous languages are endangered'
BBC : (Asia) : How to revive a 500-year-old dying languageDickens : "Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft violence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead - stone dead - and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul." ( Dombey & Son)
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