The role of colonial languages in language endangerment in Africa

Abstract

There has been some discussion in the literature on endangered languages about the role – or lack thereof – of colonial languages in presenting a threat to African languages. The view most often offered suggests that in Africa it has typically been African languages, in the form of national languages and regional lingua francas, that endanger smaller, local languages. If this is the case, the task of linguists concerned with the causes of language endangerment is to understand why Africa has not felt the threat of colonial languages in the same way or to the same extent as other regions of the world, such as the Americas or Australia. In this paper I re-examine the question of the role of colonial languages in language endangerment in Africa. A review of literature on colonialist language ideologies and attitudes towards African languages, together with the results of several sociolinguistic surveys into language choice and attitudes, leads me to question the prevailing view. Whether colonial languages are replacing – i.e. directly replacing – African languages is only part of the story. Their use reduces African languages in terms of both prestige and structure, and this contributes to their endangerment. Finally, and from a more general perspective, the pressure to create a ‘modern nation state’, on a Western (colonial) model, in requiring a single unifying language, must be seen as an important factor in language endangerment in Africa.

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