One of the main African languages. Famous African language

The population of Africa uses in everyday conversation more than eight hundred languages, which are very different from each other and at the same time have much in common. Dialects of the hottest continent in the world are grouped into 4 families: Afrasian, Niger-Congolese (formerly West Sudanese), Nilo-Saharan and Bushman. One of the main African languages is called Swahili. In East Africa, 150 million people speak this dialect.

Afrasian family

Phonetics is characterized by the absence of tones, which are present in other widely spoken dialects. It is also necessary to note the frequent laryngal and pharyngeal consonants and consonant groups rarely used in other languages.

As for the grammatical features, for the words and sentences of this group the categories of the genus in the pronoun, which are correlated with gender, are characteristic; Various ways of forming plural for names (reduplication, suffixation and alternation of vowel sounds within words) and arbitrary verbal forms (passive, causative, reflexive and others). Each African language, which is part of the Semitic branch of the Afrasian family, is distinguished by the presence of three-roots roots.

Dialects of this group are widespread among the peoples of North Africa. They also dominate the eastern part of the continent, namely, Ethiopia, mainland Tanzania, Somalia and the Middle East. The Afrasian family includes five branches: Ancient Egyptian, Cushitic, Semitic, Berber and Chad. The latter is one of the main African languages - Hausa.

Nilo-Saharan family

The dialects of this group are tonal without any nominal classes, although some of them have two grammatical genuses. The African language of the Nilo-Saharan family includes verbs that have a set of arbitrary forms. Sometimes the name uses its case system.

Important units of this group are the Shari-Nil and Saharan subfamilies. The latter includes such dialects as kanuri (used in the native kingdom of Bornu), as well as daza and teda, spoken by the population of the eastern regions of the Sahara.

Niger-Congolese family

A distinctive feature of the grammatical structure of the dialects of this group is the nominal classes, expressed by different affixes for the plural and singular. The African language, belonging to the Niger-Congolese family, has pronouns and adjectives consistent with the nouns in the class to which they are assigned. Also dialects of this group, in contrast to European, instead of three genera (female, male and middle) have a huge number of nominal classes. Thus, animals belong to one class, people to another, and, for example, trees - to a third class. There are some groups that do not have a basis for semantic classification.

Roughly, the Niger-Congolese family is divided into 8 subfamilies. These are the Atlantic, Mandingo, Kwa, Ijo, Voltaic, Eastern, Adamaua and Benue-Congo. The last branch includes the most used and known African language - Swahili.

Clicking languages

The given language family (formerly Bushman) received its name due to peculiar snapping notes that are used as consonants and are used exclusively in Africa. The articulatory interpretation of these sounds is ambiguous: they are now called non-respiratory, since they are produced practically without using the lungs, with the help of sucking movements. That is, they are opposed to the implosive and explosive consonant.

The first of the three groups into which the Bush family is divided is called Khoisan. Its languages are widespread in South Africa. In turn, the Khoisan subfamily is subdivided into the northern, southern and central group. The clicking languages are spoken by the Hottentots and Bushmen. The second and third subfamilies are called hatsa and sandave, in the dialects of which the part of the population of Tanzania speaks.

Swahili - basic African language

Kiswahili - self-name, which comes from the Arabic word sawāhil ("coast"). In scientific usage, the language entered quite late - in the second half of the XIX century. At that time, the first descriptions of grammatical characteristics appeared. By the end of the same century, Swahili dictionaries and educational books already existed.

Today, this language is taught in most major universities in the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Germany, France and other countries. In Tanzania, with the educational institution of Dar es Salaam, there is an institution that studies Swahili. His activities also include the publication of a magazine, which contains culture, literature and other issues relating to the language. Swahili received the status of a state language in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

Modern writing uses the Latin alphabet, which was introduced in the 50s of the 19th century by European missionaries. In the tenth century, instead of the Latin alphabet, there was an Old Suicide letter (arabica), with the help of which the largest epic of the 18th century was written - The Book of Irakly. The alphabet contains 24 letters, in which there is no X and Q , and C is used in combination ch .

House

The linguistic characteristic distinguishes in the language three tones: high, decreasing and low. Dialect has two series of consonants: implosive and ejective. Among the typical features of the languages of the Afrasian family, prefix conjugation and inner inflexion are noted in Hausa.

In the 19th century, Arabic dialect was used in this dialect - adzham. Since the 30s of the last century, the alphabet, based on the Latin language, has been applied. In Nigeria, the standards of literary speech are based on the cano dialect. As for the Republic of Niger, there is still no written language.

House is the African language of interethnic communication, especially among Muslims. The total number of speakers of the dialect is more than 24 million people, due to which it became the largest in the Chadian branch. The African language of Hausa is dominant in Northern Nigeria and the Republic of Niger. The difference in dialect usage in these two countries is only one letter. Ƴ - so it is written in Niger, and such'y is used in Northern Nigeria.