the spring of 1984. One of the outcomes of the conference was this directory.
Resource Webbook for African Languages: Introduction
This directory represents the efforts of a project designed to provide, for the first time, a listing in webbook form of the human, institutional, and material resources currently available for and pertinent to the study of a select set of African languages. It is part of a general project being undertaken by the Africanist community in the United States to approach systematically the problem of how to offer most effectively instruction in the some 2,000 modern African languages. One important step in this project was to establish a priority listing for African language offerings in this country. This Appendix A was one of the major outcomes of a March 1979 conference, "African Language Instruction in the United States: Directions and Priorities for the 1980's " held at Michigan State University. It is with this priority listing that this directory deals.
The project was made possible through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, with considerable support from the African Studies Center and the College of International Programs at Michigan State University, along with the worldwide cooperation and support of the Africanist community (including individual's and institutions whose names appear throughout these pages). Appendix C contains an alphabetical listing of individuals whose contributions to this project merit special recognition.
Diversity of African Languages
The reasons for studying an African language are much the same as for any other, although the choice is complicated by the fact that Africa has more languages per unit area than any other place of comparable size in the world. Most informed estimates of the number of distinct African languages fall within the range of 1,000 to 2,000. This fact alone explains why language in Africa must be seen in a very different perspective from that usually taken in the West, where we are accustomed to thinking in terms of one or possibly two languages per nation; in Africa, one finds an average of around 37 languages spoken per country.
This extensive multilingualism
leads to a whole array of policy problems of which non- Africans are only vaguely
aware. For example, what should a government's policy be on language use in
government, education, and commerce? These decisions are not easily made, for
they may well favor one group of speakers over another. Furthermore, the consequences
of these policies raise other issues concerning the use of written materials,
such as legal and official documents and textbooks. These matters, in turn,
lead to questions of how to standardize those languages which lack written traditions,
including the establishment of an orthography and the identification of a standard
dialect from among
several competitors.
Diversity also leads to policy questions for language educators outside Africa who are sincerely interested in helping to make the richness and significance of Africa's culture and history available to the world. These are also unaccustomed questions for Westerners. That is, in preparing to go to Germany, we would expect to study German, but which of the 20 languages do we choose if we are interested in Sierra Leone? The choice goes beyond the issue of what country one wishes to visit. It involves such questions as what one is going to do there, with whom one is going to speak, and so forth. It is clear that this line of questioning might well lead to the study of any of the 2,000 or so African languages.
Learning Resources
The study of any given African language involves the matter of learning resources. We assume that there are textbooks, dictionaries, readers, and so forth, in French, Spanish, and German. One merely needs to go to the library or bookstore to obtain them. All that remains is for us to make a serious personal commitment of time, effort, and money to acquire mastery of this language.
Once we have identified an African language for study, however, we cannot be certain that learning materials are available, instructors are willing and able to teach, or institutions are willing to underwrite he associated expenses. There are simply too many languages and too few resources to make it practical to offer high quality materials and instruction for all of Africa's languages. Furthermore, if limited resources are to be used efficiently, it will be necessary for the African language community to systematize its approach to the instruction of these languages.
In the United States, the
areas currently receiving systematic attention are as follows:
(1) prioritizing African languages for the purpose of optimizing language offerings;
(2) resource documentation; (3) resource assessment; and (4) resource development.
Determining Priorities
Although it should be obvious that any language in its own right is as worthy a candidate for study as any other, when the practical matters of cost and limited resources come into play, it becomes necessary to assign a priority to these languages so that the widest range of needs will be served.
To determine such a list of African languages, it is first necessary to establish reliable and objective criteria by which the list can be constructed. For these criteria to have any authority, they must be seen to represent the considered judgment of an informed and legitimate body.
In March 1979 (following upon the initiative of the directors and language program coordinators of the federally funded African studies centers at the November 1978 meeting of the African Studies Association), 32 African language specialists and area directors met at a conference on the Michigan State University campus "to establish a common understanding of the problems of African language instruction and to establish a common set of priorities and directions for the 1980's (Dwyer and Wiley 1980). One of the most important results of this conference was the ranking of African languages for the purpose of teaching and learning priorities in the United States. The criteria used in constructing this ranking, as reported in Dwyer and Wiley (1980, p. 7), are listed below.
Having established the
criteria, the conferees then proposed that rather than make a single rank- ordering
of all African languages, they should assign them to one of four priority groups
(A through D), ranging from highest to lowest (See
Appendix A).
A Word of Caution
The conference report (Dwyer and Wiley 1980) also contained a note of caution. Because of the enormous task of ranking some 2,000 languages and the difficulty in obtaining accurate and unambiguous demographic information, especially as regards population, categories B and C in particular should be regarded as "open." Thus, when it is shown that a language fits the criteria for another group, it should be reclassified accordingly. For example, Nama spoken in Namibia is currently classified as a group C language, but because it is represented by only 100,000 speakers it would more appropriately be classified as a group D language. Ruryankore-Rukiga, spoken in Uganda by 1.5 million people, ought to be classified in group B instead of its current group D languages which appear to fit into groups B and C.
With this in mind, as well as the knowledge that any language may shift in its social, political, or economic importance over time, the conference members recommended a periodic review and revision of the language ranking groups.
One should also be aware of other dangers of this categorization. Since these divisions are not natural but imposed, several equivocal languages were given a ranking only after considerable discussion. There is also the risk of rigidifying what should be seen as flexible categories. Finally, there is the risk of using this ategorization for purposes other than trying to provide a classification of language teaching priorities in the United States.
Resource Documentation
A second area in which systematic work has been done is resource documentation. Since 1976, the Center for Applied Linguistics has been cataloging and annotating materials pertinent to the study of all African languages. This resulted in the Johnson et al. (1976) publication, Language of Sub-Saharan Africa: A Survey of Materials for the Study of the Uncommonly Taught Languages, and its 1983 supplement.
The Center for Applied Linguistics project is complemented by our own (human and institutional) African Language Resource Project: Its main goal is to identify for each of the 82 high priority languages (groups A, B, and C) those individuals and institutions involved in any aspect of these languages which may be pertinent to their study. The project has the secondary goal of identifying relevant learning materials (including manuscripts and obscure publications) which have not received public attention to date. These materials are of the sort which, with a modest amount of effort and expense, could make a sizable contribution to the publicly available literature for the study of these high priority African languages.
Resource Assessment
Ideally, the serious study
of any language requires the following components:
(1) a set of learning materials;
(2) a trained language teacher;
(3) a fluent speaker of the language;
(4) an individual who knows the language technically;
(5) one or more highly motivated learners.
In the case of teaching European languages, the usual practice has been to employ as the teacher someone who embraces requirements 2, 3, and 4. This individual then selects from the wide assortment of learning materials those felt to be the most suitable based on the type of course and the teacher's methodology and style of teaching.
In the case of teaching an African language, although often with the exception of the group A languages, it has been necessary to employ two individuals who together embrace requirements 2, 3, and 4 and who work as a team. This team then selects the appropriate learning materials for the class.
In most cases, however, there are few materials from which to choose, even in the first year of study. In general, if you can find a complete set of materials, suitable or not, for first -year study of one of these 82 high priority languages, we are fortunate. If this set is also appropriate (given the course type and our teaching style and methodology), we are indeed fortunate. But when our students move on to intermediate and advanced levels, our chances of finding any materials, adequate or not, fall almost to nil. The fact is that for very few African languages are there materials designed for use beyond the beginning level. At this point the instructional team is forced to rely on its own resources, adapting material from a variety of sources as well as generating its own intermediate and advanced instruction.
Materials Assessment
Another main area of ongoing investigation in this country has been materials assessment for African languages, a process which began in the 1960's. At that time, African languages were lumped with all Third World and minority languages under the euphemistic rubric of "critical languages" (see Fife and Nielson 1961; Hamp 1965). These surveys tended to lack the appreciation for the African language situation mentioned above and certainly the Africanist expertise needed to deal with it. The March 1979 Directions and Priorities meeting mentioned earlier also raised similar criticisms of aspects of the report by the Modern Language Task Force, Less Commonly Taught Languages (in Brod 1980).
In the 1970's with the support of the then U.S. Office of Education, systematic materials surveys were initiated, the most notable by Hodge and Spears (1975). Offered for the first time was a set of criteria for determining high priority languages and an assessment of learning material needs. As great as this improvement was, the assessment now requires revision for several reasons: (1) new materials have been added to the list; (2) the priority listing has been refined; and (3) new concerns have been raised concerning the suitability of learning materials.
But production of effective
recommendations for revising these evaluations requires the cooperation of the
entire African language teaching community. Only when the users of these materials
are involved will guidelines have any practical value. To this end, the U.S.
Department of Education, with additional support from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, provided funds to plan and conduct a guidelines conference;
it was held at Michigan State University in
the spring of 1984. One of the outcomes of the conference was this directory.
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