Internet: A New Space for African Languages (fwd)

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Internet: A New Space for African Languages

Highway Africa News Agency (Grahamstown)
November 18, 2005
By Ansbert Ngurumo
Geneva
http://allafrica.com/stories/200511180584.html

Concerns that African languages could become extinct are almost over.
The internet is becoming a refuge for the continent's languages that
would otherwise become extinct.

Despite the powerful influence of English, French and Portuguese as
official languages in certain African countries, indigenous African
languages are proving that technology belongs to no language.

Kiswahili, a language spoken by about 80 million people in Eastern and
Central Africa and recently adopted as one of African Union's official
languages, is extensively used on internet websites by newspapers and
bloggers.

Linguists interested in African languages are increasingly turning their
interests to translate and teach Kiswahili on the internet.

The Kamusi Project by Yale University www.yale.edu.swahili is a recent
initiative aimed at translating Kiswahili into English.

Tanzania is probably Africa's central place for development of
Kiswahili. 99 percent of the country's 35 million people speak
Kiswahili.

Sections of daily newspapers, portals, national websites and other
relevant information is now accessible on Internet, making the internet
a new space for African languages.

Other languages enjoying similar advancements include Uganda's Luganda,
Kenya's Kikuyu, Burundi's Kirundi, Rwanda's Kinyarwanda, Somalia's
Somali, and Nigeria's Hausa.

The proliferation of African languages on the internet is giving these
languages a new breath of life.

The internet has provided a platform for Africans to communicate with
friends, relatives and in the diaspora in their indigenous languages.

Several Africans now maintain blogs where they write in different
African languages. See www.ngurumo.blogspot.com
www.jikomboe.blogspot.com