The Linguistic Situation in the Lake Chad Area in Central Africa

Africa ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Lukas
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Linguistic Groups ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
African Linguistics ◽  
Source Of Information

Opening ParagraphOur knowledge of the linguistic groups in the Lake Chad area of Central Africa is very incomplete. In many respects the work of H. Barth, Central-African Vocabularies, 1862, is our only source of information. This source is incomplete, especially phonetically, and therefore of little value. The study of the sounds of African languages has developed very much recently, and there is no important school of African linguistics in which descriptive phonetics does not play an outstanding role.

Observations of a Semitist on Recent Etymologies proposed by Africanists

Africa ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-328
Author(s):  
Wolf Leslau
Keyword(s):  
Original Form ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The North ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Inadequate Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Groups ◽  
Linguistic Classification ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
African Linguistics

Opening ParagraphThe Africanists were stirred up recently by Joseph Greenberg's Studies in African Linguistic Classification (New Haven, 1955). Not being an Africanist myself I do not intend to express here my opinion on the validity of Greenberg's classification. Since, however, Cushitic and Semitic comparisons were injected into the discussion I wish to sound a note of caution against certain etymologies and comparisons proposed in the various studies. The Semitist will tend to be rather conservative when dealing with etymologies and comparisons. The reasons for his cautious attitude are easily understandable. He deals with languages for which he has written documents going back as far as the third millenium B.C. (as is the case of Akkadian); the investigation of some of these started hundreds of years ago. This is not so in African linguistics. The African languages came to our attention only recently and for many of them we have only scanty vocabularies at our disposal. We do not know much about the phonetic development of most of the African languages and, as a result of this situation, the Africanist finds himself sometimes comparing roots representing different stages of the language without being able to reduce them to the original form. The Semitist is in a more favourable position. Because of his knowledge of the missing links within the various linguistic groups he is able to bring back, for instance, Ennemor (Gurage) roots such as äč ‘boy’ to Semitic wld, e'ä ‘crunch’ to ḥqā, ny'ä ‘be far’ to rḥq and others, even though these derivations would seem a tour de force at first consideration. In some studies dealing with African linguistics one occasionally finds comparisons and etymologies of the above-mentioned kind, but the Africanist is often unable, through no fault of his own, to justify his comparisons because of his inadequate knowledge of the linguistic history of these languages. There is also a simple human factor. In dealing with languages stretching from the north to the south of Africa it is not always possible to be adequately acquainted with the phonetic history of the various language groups even if sufficient documentation were available. Consequently occasional inexact comparisons and etymologies are established. I am hopeful that the Africanist will not refuse the co-operation of a Semitist and an amateur Cushitist. The purpose of the present note is to rectify some comparisons of Semitic and Cushitic brought into the discussion of African linguistic classification.

Linguistic Research between Nile and Lake Chad

Africa ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Lukas
Keyword(s):  
Research Work ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
The North ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Native Education ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
North Lake ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
North Western

Opening ParagraphIn the vast countries which stretch between Kordofan and the Bahr el Ghazal Province in the east, Tripolis in the north, Lake Chad and the north-western frontier of the Cameroons in the west, and a line in the south which is formed by the southern border of the colony Ubangui-Chari, linguistic research work is still only in its beginnings. The languages spoken in the above regions which comprise the highlands of Tibesti, Borku, Enedi, and the old kingdoms of Darfor, Dar Banda, Wadai, Bagirmi, Bornu, Adamawa, and their neighbouring countries, are still to-day the least known of all the languages of Africa. This part of Central Africa lies far from the animated coastal areas and was occupied by European Powers only in a comparatively recent period. But the study of languages of newly occupied countries is not the first object of a Native Administration, especially where Arabic is a first means of communication; and Arabic plays an important role indeed in some parts at least of Central Africa. Besides the use for purposes of administration, linguistic research work is linked to two undertakings: the missions and native education. Missionary work is especially important in pagan countries, but may have little or no influence in a large part of Muhammadan Central Africa.

The Gbaya Languages

Africa ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Samarin
Keyword(s):  
Single Unit ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Third ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Cluster A ◽  
Linguistic Groups ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe Gbaya languages are treated in the third part of the recently published volume of the series, Handbook of African Languages. In this work they are held to represent a dialect cluster (a single unit) within the larger unit, the Banda-Gbaya-Ngbandi languages. In thus uniting these linguistic groups, Tucker and Bryan agree at least in part with Greenberg, who includes them as well as some other languages within his Eastern Branch of the Niger-Congo Family. On the other hand, they do not go as far as Greenberg does on the ground that ‘the divergent features of these languages [i.e. those included by Greenberg in the Eastern Branch] would seem to be sufficient to exclude some of them from this “branch”, and possibly to allocate them to other branches . . .’. They therefore ‘feel that Greenberg's “Eastern Branch” grouping cannot be justified (still less the order of his items), except on the grounds of geographical expediency’ (Tucker and Bryan, p. 146).

AFRICAN VOICES FROM THE CONGO COAST: LANGUAGES AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTIFICATION IN THE SLAVE SHIP JOVEM MARIA (1850)

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCOS ABREU LEITÃO DE ALMEIDA
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Slave Ship ◽  
Congo River ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
History Of ◽  
African Linguistics ◽  
Political Vocabulary ◽  
Ethnolinguistic Group

AbstractBetween 1845 and 1850, the Congo coast became the most important source of slaves for the coffee growing areas in the Brazilian Empire. This essay develops a new methodology to understand the making of the ‘nations’ of 290 Africans found on the slave ship Jovem Maria, which boarded slaves in the Congo river and was captured by the Brazilian Navy near Rio de Janeiro in 1850. A close reading of such ‘nations’ reveals a complex overlapping between languages and forms of identification that alters the historian's use of concepts such as ‘ethnolinguistic group’ and ‘Bantu-based lingua franca’ in the Atlantic world. Building on recent developments in Central African linguistics, the article develops a social history of African languages in the Atlantic that foregrounds how recaptives negotiated commonalities and boundaries in the diaspora by drawing on a political vocabulary indigenous to their nineteenth-century homes in Central Africa.

Profile and Process: Subsistence Hunters in a Zambian Community

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart A. Marks
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Wild Mammals ◽  
Wildlife Species ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Local Traditions

Opening ParagraphMost descriptions of social life in rural communities in Central Africa contain some references to hunters or hunting practices. Despite the decimation of some wildlife species by rinderpest at the turn of the last century, wildlife continued plentiful in many regions and hunting and trapping were part of the subsistence routines of males in rural areas during the first three decades of this century. During this period in Zambia, European administrators (Gouldsbury and Sheane 1911; Melland 1923; Hughes 1933), missionaries (Smith and Dale 1920), and itinerants (Lyell 1910; Letcher 1911) often interspersed their exploitative accounts of ‘sport hunting’ with descriptions of chants, rituals, magic and other hunting lore of their African associates. These accounts of local traditions, often colored with the latent assumptions of the time, apparently intrigued and fascinated their European readership then mentally riding the crest of colonial expansion and technological superiority. In subsequent decades, large wild mammals declined in numbers and in importance as a subsistence base in most rural areas. Yet information on hunting customs, gleaned incidentally in the pursuit of the researchers' major interests, has been a continuous feature of ethnographies written subsequently by social scientists (Richards 1939; White 1956; Turner 1957; Scudder 1962; Stefaniszyn 1964; Reynolds 1968) suggesting a widespread enthusiasm for hunting even where wildlife is no longer of consequence. These fortuitous bits of information on the subsistence hunter's world still leave many unresolved questions as to the function and frequency of these customs, the numbers and types of hunters in each community, and the nature of subsequent changes.

scholarly journals The Hydro-Isostatic Rebound Related to Megalake Chad (Holocene, Africa): First Numerical Modelling and Significance for Paleo-Shorelines Elevation

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 3180
Author(s):  
Anthony Mémin ◽  
Jean-François Ghienne ◽  
Jacques Hinderer ◽  
Claude Roquin ◽  
Mathieu Schuster
Keyword(s):  
Central Africa ◽  
Earth Model ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Digital Elevation ◽  
Basin Scale ◽  
Drying Up ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Differential Uplift ◽  
Sahel Region ◽  
The Impact

Lake Chad, the largest freshwater lake of north-central Africa and one of the largest lakes of Africa, is the relict of a giant Quaternary lake (i.e., Megalake Chad) that developed during the early- to mid-Holocene African Humid Period. Over the drylands of the Sahara Desert and the semi-arid Sahel region, remote sensing (optical satellite imagery and digital elevation models) proved a successful approach to identify the paleo-shorelines of this giant paleo-lake. Here we present the first attempt to estimate the isostatic response of the lithosphere due to Megalake Chad and its impact on the elevation of these paleo-shorelines. For this purpose, we use the open source TABOO software (University of Urbino, Italy) and test four different Earth models, considering different parameters for the lithosphere and the upper mantle, and the spatial distribution of the water mass. We make the simplification of an instantaneous drying-up of Megalake Chad, and compute the readjustment related to this instant unload. Results (i.e., duration, amplitude, and location of the deformation) are then discussed in the light of four key areas of the basin displaying prominent paleo-shoreline morpho-sedimentary features. Whatever the Earth model and simplification involved in the simulations, this work provides a strong first-order evaluation of the impact on hydro-isostasy of Megalake Chad. It demonstrates that a water body similar to this megalake would induce a significant deformation of the lithosphere in the form of a vertical differential uplift at basin-scale reaching up to 16 m in the deepest part of the paleo-lake, and its shorelines would then be deflected from 2 m (southern shorelines) to 12 m (northern shorelines), with a maximum rate of more than 1 cm y−1. As such, any future study related to the paleo-shorelines of Megalake Chad, should integrate such temporal and spatial variation of their elevations.

A Nineteenth-Century Ruhr in Central Africa

Africa ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Warnier ◽  
Ian Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphOver two hundred thousand cubic metres of slag and smelting debris, at least two hundred and seventy smelting sites, more than seven hundred recorded kaolin pits for building and lining furnaces, and probably half as many again not visited by us—these are a few figures that establish three villages of the Ndop Plain, in the highlands of Western Cameroon, as a nineteenth-century Ruhr in Central Africa. To this day, this all Sub-Saharan African record leaves Meroe, ‘the Birmingham of Africa’ well behind. Perhaps the record remains unbroken, however, just because scholars interested in African iron industries seem to have been unconcerned with the overall output of these industries.

Song and spirit: The use of songs in the management of ritual contexts

Africa ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bennetta Jules-Rosette
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Apostolic Church

Opening ParagraphThe Apostolic Church of John Maranke (Vapostori or Bapostolo), an indigenous Christian church founded in Umtali, Rhodesia, now has congregations across Central Africa. For the Church's central ritual event, the Sabbath kerek, and other occasions of worship, singing constitutes the core of ritual practice and is used to invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit. These songs combine traditional Bantu rhythmic patterns with a unique Apostolic form. Often drawn from biblical themes, the songs are composed by members as spiritually inspired pieces.

scholarly journals A DPSIR and SAF Analysis of Water Insecurity in Lake Chad Basin, Central Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 384 ◽  
pp. 313-318
Author(s):  
Lukman Adeboye Soboyejo ◽  
Ahmad Mojisola Sakinat ◽  
Abayomi Oluwatobiloba Bankole
Keyword(s):  
Human Activities ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Ecological Status ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Water Insecurity ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Flow Modification ◽  
Lake Chad Basin

Abstract. Lake Chad is a transboundary freshwater body located in the extreme south of the Sahara Desert. Many centuries ago, the synergies between nature and human activities in the basin were in harmony; and nowadays, the manifestation of unsustainable human activities and drier climate in the basin is now evident. This study assesses the water insecurity and associated environmental issues in the area using the combined Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) and System-Approach-Framework (SAF) frameworks. In achieving this, we conducted literature review to establish the major effects and possible consequences of water scarcity in the area. The SAF defines the Lake boundaries and eventually links the active stakeholders involved. On the other hand, the DPSIR reveals that about 90 % of inhabitants depends on agriculture, with warming (temperature) significantly increasing in the basin (0.22 ∘C per decade) – socio-economic and natural Drivers respectively – as well as increase in population. Pressures include input from irrigation systems, river–flow modification, limited rainfall, and prolonged drought periods. These pressures have led to change in the state of Lake Chad, like freshwater shortages and loss of ecological status. Impacts on human welfares includes mass displacement, unemployment, paralyzed socio-economic activities, and social unrest. The societal-Response has prompted various measures like the launch of campaigns and awareness, planned Inter-Basin-Water-Transfer (IBTW), and several policy changes for better governance. Conclusively, the restoration of Lake Chad solely depends on climate conditions and management policies. However, this study recommends the prioritization of monitoring systems, water-allocation plans, ecological plans, and modelling tools for better decision processes.

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