The
African Union has not legally defined specific working languages, though
they do say that the working languages "shall be, if possible, African
languages, Arabic, English, French and Portuguese." The prominence of Arabic in many African countries is due to the Arab expansion into Africa from the 7th century, with subsequent Arabization of local populations. Indo-European languages were introduced during the European colonisation from the 15th century.
Cameroon – English and French are co-official, with Cameroonian Pidgin English
widely spoken. Twenty-four major African language families and
sub-groups are present in Cameroon. Cameroon is one of the most
linguistically diverse areas in the world. (Languages of Cameroon)
Egypt – Arabic is official, with Egyptian Arabic being the most common spoken language. English and French are major languages for education and trade. See languages of Egypt
Mozambique – Portuguese is the official language. Makua, Sena, Ndau, Xitsonga
and Swahili are spoken by a sizable amount of the population. The
educated often speak English as a second or third language. The Arab,
Indian and Chinese communities speak their own languages. (Languages of Mozambique)
Rwanda – Kinyarwanda, French, and English are official languages. Kinyarwanda is the mother tongue of the vast majority of the population. (Languages of Rwanda). French and English are only spoken by a minority, and Swahili is used as a vehicular language.
Senegal – French is the official language,
used regularly by a minority of Senegalese educated in a system styled
upon the colonial-era schools of French origin. Most persons also speak
their own ethnic language while, especially in Dakar, Wolof is the lingua franca. Pulaar is spoken by the Fulas (French: Peul; Fula: Fulɓe) and Toucouleur (Halpulaar). Various Portuguese Creoles are spoken in Senegal by those from Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe. (Languages of Senegal)
Seychelles – English, French and Seychellois Creole
are official. As Seychelles had no indigenous population, many
languages are spoken by the various African, Chinese, European, and
Indian peoples who colonized it. Seychellois Creole is the lingua franca
between these groups. (Languages of Seychelles)
Somalia – Somali and Arabic are official. Somali is the most spoken language. Other Afro-Asiatic languages are also spoken in some areas, such as Maay, Dabarre, and Tunni. In addition, some Niger–Congo languages are spoken by ethnic minorities in parts of the south, including Chimwiini and Kibajuni (two variants of Swahili) as well as Mushunguli. English is also widely used and taught in schools. Italian used to be a major language, but its influence significantly diminished following independence. (Languages of Somalia)
Tanzania – English and Swahili are official. Nevertheless, only the latter is a real lingua franca. Gujarati is spoken by many in the Indian community. About 120 indigenous languages from all the four language families of Africa are spoken. (Languages of Tanzania)
Tunisia – Classical Arabic is official, French is often used as a language of commerce. A small percentage speaks the Berber language, with its varieties like Tamezret-Berber, Matmata-Berber, Sened-Berber (may be extinct) and Djerbi-Berber. (Languages of Tunisia)
Uganda –
English and Swahili are official. Nonetheless, Swahili is not the most
widely used vernacular language despite being the vehicular language of
the populace. Indeed, Ganda is the most spoken language. Minoritiy languages include Soga, Nkole, Kiga, Teso, Masaba, Nyoro (Languages of Uganda)
Zambia – English is the official language,
many African languages are spoken by the country's roughly 72 different
ethnic groups, with Nyanja being the most widely spoken. (Languages of Zambia)
Eurolinguistics is a neologistic term for the study of the languages of Europe.
The term Eurolinguistics was first used by Norbert Reiter in 1991 (German equivalent: Eurolinguistik). Apart from a series of works dealing with only a part of the European languages, the work of Harald Haarmann pursues a "pan- or trans-European perspective". This goal is also pursued by Mario Wandruszka.
Typological questions have mainly been dealt with by the Eurolinguistischer Arbeitskreis Mannheim (ELAMA; led by Per Sture Ureland) and the EUROTYP projects. Important sources of linguistic data for Eurolinguistic studies are the Atlas Linguarum Europae (for vocabulary studies) and the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures (Haspelmath et al. 2005, for grammar studies).
The internet platform EuroLinguistiX (ELiX) (edited by Joachim Grzega)
offers a bibliography of Eurolinguistic publications as well as a wiki,
a discussion forum, an academic internet journal in order to address
also aspects of "linguistic and cultural history", "sociology of
languages", "language politics" and "intercultural communication". In 2006, Joachim Grzega published a basic reader on common features of European languages.
Also joint with the ELAMA, the EuroLSJ project by
Erhard Steller tries to collect essential results of Eurolinguistics and
make them usable for everyday life in Europe by transforming them into a
representative standard language (LSJ European / Europé LSJ)
which wants to serve as an optimized "acquisition and memory helper"
(Giuseppe G. Castorina) for a quicker and easier access to all languages
of Europe.
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1991, Grzega 2006)
Writing was introduced to Europe by the Greeks, and from there
also brought to the Romans (6th century BC). There are four alphabets in
regular use in the areas generally considered Europe. The Latin alphabet was developed into several scripts. In the early years of Europe, the Carolingian minuscules were the most important variety of the Latin script. From this two branches developed, the Gothic/Fracture/German tradition, which Germans used well into the 20th century, and the Italian/Italic/Antiqua/Latin
tradition, still used. For some nations the integration into Europe
meant giving up older scripts, e.g. the Germanic gave up the runes (Futhark) (3rd to 17th centuries), the Irish the Ogham script (4th to 7th centuries). The Cyrillic script is the second most widespread alphabet in Europe, and was developed in the 9th century under the influence of the Greek, Latin and Glagolitic
alphabets. Both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets are used for multiple
languages in multiple states, both inside and outside Europe. As well
as these two, there are two alphabets used primarily for a single
language, although they are occasionally applied to minority languages
in the states from which they originate. The oldest of these alphabets
is the Greek alphabet,
which could be considered the progenitor of all the surviving alphabets
of Europe, with the earliest recorded inscriptions appearing in the 9th
century BC. The other is found in the Caucasus, originating in the 5th century. The Georgian alphabet is used primarily to write Georgian, though it is also used to write the other Kartvelian languages, Svan, Mingrelian and Laz, all of which are found largely within the borders of Georgia.
Sound features
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1973, Asher 1994, Price 1998, Grzega 2006)
The sound systems of languages may differ considerably between
languages. European languages can thus rather be characterized
negatively, e.g. by the absence of click sounds. One could also think of specific prosodic features, such as tonal accents. But there are also tonal languages in Europe: Serbo-Croatian (e.g. lètī ‘he flies, is flying’ with long rising accent vs. lêta ‘years’ with long falling accent) and Slovene (e.g. sûda ‘of the vessel’ with long falling accent vs. súda
‘of the court’ with long rising accent). In Slovene, the use of the
musical accent is declining though (cf. Rehder 1998: 234) --but there
are hardly any contexts where intelligibility is endangered. In Sweden Swedish (but not in Finland Swedish) there also is a pitch accent in some words, which can be meaningful, e.g. ´anden ‘the duck’ vs. ˇanden ‘the ghost, spirit’.
Grammatical features
(Sources and further information for this section: Asher 1994, Price 1998, Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006)
As a general introductory remark we can distinguish between three structural types of languages:
isolating
(i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through analytic
means and relatively strict word-order rules, e.g. the strict S-V order
rule in English),
agglutinating (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixes, with one affix expressing exactly one function) and
inflecting (i.e. grammatical/sentence functions are expressed through affixes, with one affix expressing several functions).
European languages are seldom pure representatives of one type. For
(a) Modern English is a good example (and in many way the code oral of
French verbs); for (c) Old English and Modern High German are good
examples (and in many ways the code écrit of French verb forms);
classical representatives of type (b) are Finnish and Hungarian. If a
language is not isolating, this does not necessarily mean that it has no
word-order rules. Latin, Basque, Finnish and the Slavic languages have a relatively free word order, whereas many languages show more restricted rules. German and Dutch, e.g., show verb-second word-order in main clauses and verb-final order in subordinate clauses. English has subject-verb word-order, which is also preferred by the Romanic languages. Irish and Scottish Gaelic have a basic verb-initial word order.
We can also distinguish between analytic constructions (with free grammatical morphemes,
i.e. grammatical elements as separate words) and synthetic
constructions (with bound grammatical morphemes, i.e. grammatical
elements attached to or included in a word), e.g. the house of the man vs. the man's house.
Apart from the points already mentioned, the categories of aspect
(not always easy to separate from the tense system) and gender are
noteworthy. Under the category of aspect linguists basically understand
the distinction between perfective actions (activity finished, has led
to a result; single event) and imperfective actions (activity not yet
finished, w/out information on termination; long duration, repetitive).
The Slavic languages have a fine and rigid aspect system; in English
there's the distinction between progressive and non-progressive (simple)
and a distinction between present perfect and past; in the Romanic
languages the imperfect serves to denote background actions.
The most current gender
systems in Europe are twofold (masculine vs. feminine, e.g. in the
Romanic languages, or uter vs. neuter, e.g. in Swedish and Danish); but
there are also languages that are threefold (e.g. Slavic, German) or
lack grammatical gender at all (e.g. English, Hungarian, Finnish). The
problem of gender also concerns the system of personal pronouns.
We normally distinguish between three persons singular and three
persons plural, but there are also some languages that have specific
words for the dual (e.g. Slovene).
In the 3rd person singular we often have a distinction according to
grammatical gender; in English, though, the choice is determined by
natural gender; in Hungarian and Finnish we have no differentiation at
all, in the Scandinavian languages on the other hand we have a
differentiation that incorporate both grammatical and natural gender. In
some languages the grammatical gender is also relevant in the 3rd pl.
(e.g. the Romance languages).
Whereas traditionally we group languages according to historical language families (e.g. Indo-European languages, Uralic languages),
a more modern way is to look at grammatical features from a synchronic
point of view. A certain number of common structural features would then
characterize a sprachbund. For Europe, the most prominent sprachbund that we can determine is referred to as SAE (= Standard Average European) or Charlemagne sprachbund. Haspelmath (2001) illustrates that German, Dutch, French, Occitan and Northern Italian are the most central members of this sprachbund. Important features are (cf., e.g., Haspelmath 2001, Heine/Kuteva 2006):
the distinction between an indefinite and a definite article
the formation of relative clauses, which are positioned after the (pro)noun concerned and are introduced by a variable relative pronoun
a passive voice
construction that shows the object of the action in the syntactic
position of the subject and that uses the past participle in connection
with an auxiliary
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Paczolay 1997, Panzer 2000, Görlach 2002)
Latin, French and English not only served or still serve as linguae francae
(cf. below), but also influenced the vernacular/national languages due
to their high prestige. Due to this prestige, there are not only
"necessity loans", but also "luxury loans" and pseudo-loans. Many loans
from these three languages (esp. Neo-Latin with its Greek elements) can
be considered internationalisms, although occasionally the meanings vary from one language to another, which might even lead to misunderstandings. Examples:
Lat. forma: e.g. Fr. forme, It. Sp. Cat. Cz. Slovak. Serbo-Croat. Slovene Maltese Hung. Pol. Latv. Lith. forma, Dan. Swed. E. Du. vorm (shape) and form (aerobic endurance), Romansh furma, G. Form, Ir. foirm
Fr. restaurant, e.g. E. Du. Norw. Cat. Romansh restaurant, G. Restaurant, Swed. restaurang, Pg. restaurante, Sp. restaurante, It. ristorante, Cz. restaurace, Slovak reštaurácia, Slovene restavracija, Latv. restorâns, Lith. restoranas, Estn. restoran, Pol. restauracja, Serbian restoran, Maltese ristorant/restorant
E. manager, e.g. Du. Norw. Swed. Icel. Fr. Sp. Cat. It. Romansh manager, G. Manager, Finn. manageri, Pol. menadżer, Serbo-Croat. menadžer, Lith. menedžeris, Hung. menedzser, Maltese maniġer
Three minor source languages for European borrowings are Arabic
(esp. in mathematics and science, foreign plants and fruits), Italian
(esp. in arts, esp. from the 15th to the 17th centuries), German (esp.
in arts, education, mining, trading from the 12th to the 20th centuries
with varying importance).
As far as the structuring or "wording" of the world is concerned
changes occur relatively fast due to progress in knowledge,
sociopolitical changes etc. Lexical items that seem more conservative
are proverbs and metaphorical
idioms. Many European proverbs and idioms go back to antiquity and the
Bible; some originate in national stories and were spread over other
languages via Latin. A typical European proverb to express that there is
no profit without working can be paraphrased as "Roasted
pigeons/larks/sparrows/geese/chickens/birds don't fly into one's mouth",
e.g.:
Czech: Pečení holubi nelétají do huby (pigeons)
Danish: Stegte duer flyve ingen i munden (pigeon)
Dutch: De gebraden duiven vliegen je niet in de mond (pigeons)
English: He thinks that larks will fall into his mouth roasted
Finnish: Ei paistetut varpuset suuhun lennä (sparrows)
French: Les alouettes ne vous tombent pas toutes rôties dans le bec (larks)
German: Gebratene Tauben fliegen einem nicht ins Maul (pigeon)
Hungarian: Senkinek nem repül a szájába a sült galamb (pigeon)
Latvian: Cepts zvirbulis no jumta mutē nekrīt (sparrow)
Lithuanian: Keptas karvelis neatlėks pats i burną (pigeon)
Norwegian (Nynorsk): Det kjem ikkje steikte fuglar fljugande i munnen (birds)
Polish: Pieczone gołąbki nie przyjdą same do gąbki (pigeons)
Serbo-Croatian: Pečeni golubovi ne lete u usta (pigeons)
Slovak: Nech nik nečaká, že mu pečené holuby budú padať do úst (pigeons)
Slovene: Pečeni golobje ne lete nobenemu v usta (pigeons)
Swedish: Stekta sparvar flyger inte in i munnen (sparrows)
Communicative strategies
(Sources
and further information for this section: Axtell 1993, Collett 1993,
Morrison et al. 1994, Hickey/Stewart 2005, Grzega 2006)
In Geert Hofstede's terms Europe can, to a large extent, be considered an individualistic
civilization (i.e. a rather direct and analytic style is preferred,
important points are mentioned before an explanation or illustration in
an argument, decisions are based on compromise or majority vote); in
contrast, the Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, Arabic and Hindu (Indian)
civilizations are collectivistic (i.e. a rather indirect and synthetic
style is used, explanations and illustrations are mentioned before the
essential point of an argument, decisions are reached through consent).
We can further make Edward Hall's
distinction between "low context" communication (i.e. direct style,
person-oriented, self-projection, loquacity) and "high context"
communication (i.e. indirect style, status-oriented, reservation,
silence). Most European nations use "low context" communication.
Some specific features of European communication strategies
The mostly reciprocal use of address terms (this is different in Slavic and Asian civilizations, for totally different reasons).
Status seems to play a less important role than in the Sinic, Korean,
and Japanese civilizations. Communication between the sexes is
absolutely normal in Europe, whereas it is traditionally very rare in
the Arabic civilization. A dual system of pronouns is used in the vast
majority of European languages: Romance, such as French, or Spanish
(which also exists in Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala [vos vs. usted], German, Slavic languages [e.g. Russ. ty vs. vy]; it has also been said that the American dialect form y'all is/was occasionally used as a formal address pronoun: see y'all).
There are also tendencies in the nominal series of address terms, which
distinguish Europe from other civilizations. In private, Europeans
nowadays quickly agree to address each other by the first name; but in
business communication, one should first use the correct title, even if a
change toward less formal addressing may occur quite rapidly. Titles
are definitely more important in the Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese
civilizations; in the Slavic civilization nicknames are frequently used
in all kinds of private and informal conversation — especially in Slavic
Orthodox countries, such as Russia. Nicknames are sometimes also used
in informal and social situations among close friends and associates in
the Americas (North and South/Latin), but to a somewhat lesser extent.
Many salutation terms in Europe (cf. especially Spillner
2001) include wishes for a good time of the day, for health (or a
question whether somebody is in good health), for success or for luck.
The common Arabic and Asiatic wish for peace, though, is rare in
European civilization; an exception is the formal ecclesiastical Latin Pax tecum/vobiscum.
Note that many European salutation phrases are frequently (at least in
informal situations) very much reduced on a phonetic level, which is not
so much the case in Arabic, Hindu (Indian), Sinic (Chinese) and
Japanese civilizations.
Frequent small talk topics are traveling, soccer (and other
international sports disciplines), hobbies, the entertainment industry
and the weather. In contrast, sexuality, death, religion, politics,
money or class, personal issues and swearing are generally tabooed. Any
racial, ethnic, sexist and cultural biased comments are shunned and
morally opposed in Europe (and all developed countries) more than
anywhere else. In Hindu, Arabic, Sinic and Japanese civilization people
are frequently asked about their family (in Arabic civilization,
however, this excludes the wife; even the word "wife" is compared to the
"F" word in English-speaking countries). Due to their status-oriented
nature, people from the Far East civilizations often ask for
"administrative form" information, especially in Japan.
Among Europeans (includes the Americas and Australia) and sometimes
east Asians (esp. in Japan), a "thank you" is expected and welcomed in
quite a number of situations (perhaps the most in Great Britain and
North America), whereas South Asian and Middle Eastern people use the
phrase in a more economical way and often content themselves with simple
looks of thanks; on the other hand, other non-western civilizations
(e.g. Polynesians of the South Pacific and Native American tribes) have
rather extended formulae of thanks.
With requests (cf. especially Trosborg 1995 and
Cenoz/Valencia 1996), the bare imperative is normally avoided in favor
of devices such as questions, modal auxiliaries, subjunctive,
conditional, special adverbs. The exchange of verbal stems, which is
found in Japanese and Sinic languages, is not a part of (Indo-)European
languages.
When somebody has to say no, this is normally accompanied by
some form of apology or explanation. In the civilizations of the Far
East and many Native American tribes in North America, the formal
equivalents for "no" are unacceptable and/or tabooed in general.
Apologies are necessary with face-threatening acts or after
somebody has intruded into somebody else's private sphere—which is
bigger and thus more easily violated in North America and Asia than in
Europe and bigger in Europe (esp. the British Isles) than in Latin
America and the Arab nations, and the concept of privacy and apology is
universal, but varies from northern/western, eastern/Slavic and
southern/Mediterranean countries (cf. especially Trosborg 1995).
By comparing the national descriptions by Axtell (1998) and Morris
et al. (1979), one can conclude that in Europe one can safely make compliments about somebody's clothes and appearance, meals and restaurants, voluntary offerings, a room's equipment.
Linguae Francae
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)
(Medieval and Neo-) Latin with a gradual decline as lingua franca since the late Middle Ages, when the vernacular
languages gained more and more importance (first language academy in
Italy in 1582/83), in the 17th century even at universities) apart from
the Vatican).
The first type of dictionary was the glossary,
a more or less structured list of lexical pairs (in alphabetical order
or according to conceptual fields). The Latin-German (Latin-Bavarian)
Abrogans was among the first of these. A new wave of lexicography can be seen from the late 15th century onwards (after the introduction of the printing press, with the growing interest in standardizing languages).
Language and identity, standardization processes
(Sources and further information for this section: Haarmann 1975, Haarmann 1993, Grzega 2006)
In the Middle Ages the two most important definitory elements of Europe were Christianitas and Latinitas.
Thus language—at least the supranational language—played an elementary
role. This changed with the spread of the national languages in official
contexts and the rise of a national feeling. Among other things, this
led to projects of standardizing national language and gave birth to a
number of language academies (e.g. 1582 Accademia della Crusca in Florence, 1617 Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, 1635 Académie française, 1713 Real Academia de la Lengua
in Madrid). "Language" was then (and still is today) more connected
with "nation" than with "civilization" (particularly in France).
"Language" was also used to create a feeling of "religious/ethnic
identity" (e.g. different Bible translations by Catholics and Protestants of the same language).
Among the first standardization discussions and processes are the
ones for Italian ("questione della lingua": Modern Tuscan/Florentine
vs. Old Tuscan/Florentine vs. Venetian > Modern Florentine + archaic
Tuscan + Upper Italian), French (standard is based on Parisian), English
(standard is based on the London dialect) and (High) German (based on: chancellery of Meißen/Saxony + Middle German + chancellery of Prague/Bohemia
["Common German"]). But also a number of other nations began to look
for and develop a standard variety in the 16th century.
Linguistic minorities
(Sources and further information for this section: Stephens 1976, Price 1998, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)
Despite the importance of English as an international lingua
franca in Europe, Europe is also linguistically diverse, and minority
languages are protected, e.g. by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages founded in the 1990s. This underlines that the popular view of "one nation = one language" (cf. Wirrer 2003) is mostly false.
A minority language can be defined as a language used by a group
that defines itself as an ethnic minority group, whereby the language of
this group is typologically different and not a dialect of the standard
language. For several years now, Jan Wirrer has been working on the
status of minority languages in Europe (cf., e.g., Wirrer 2000 and
2003). In Europe—e.g. thanks to the European Charter of Regional and
Minority Language—some languages are in quite a strong position, in the
sense that they are given special status, such as Basque, Irish, Welsh,
Catalan, Rhaeto-Romance/Romansh and Romani, native language of the Roma/Gypsies
in southern Europe), whereas others are in a rather weak position (e.g.
Frisian, Scottish Gaelic, Turkish, Saami/Lappish, Sorbian/Wendish and
Yiddish, the once common language of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe). Especially non-indigenous minority languages are not given official status in the EU.
Some minor languages don't even have a standard yet, i.e. they have not even reached the level of an ausbausprache yet, which could be changed, e.g., if these languages were given official status. (cf. also next section).
Issues in language politics
(Sources and further information for this section: Siguan 2002, Ahrens 2003, Grzega 2006)
France is the origin of two laws, or decrees, concerning
language: the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts (1239), which says that
every document in France should be written in French (i.e. not in Latin
nor Occitan) and the French Loi Toubon,
which aims at eliminating Anglicisms from official documents. But a
characteristic feature of Europe is linguistic diversity and tolerance,
which is not only shown by the European Charta of Regional and Minority
Languages. An illustrative proof of the promotion of linguistic
diversity in the Middle Ages is the translation school in Toledo, Spain,
founded in the 12th century (in medieval Toledo the Christian, the
Jewish and the Arab civilizations lived together remarkably peacefully).
This tolerant linguistic attitude is also the reason why the EU's
general rule is that every official national language is also an
official EU language. However, Letzebuergish/Luxemburgish
is not an official EU language, because there are also other (stronger)
official languages with "EU status" in that country. Several concepts
for an EU language policy are being debated:
several official languages (e.g. English, French, German, Spanish + another topic-dependent language).
all national languages as official languages, but with a number of
relais languages for translations (e.g. English or Esperanto as relais
languages).
New immigrants in European countries are expected to learn the host
nation's language, but are still speaking and reading their native
languages (i.e. Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili and Tahitian)
in Europe's increasingly multi-ethnic/multicultural profile.