Difference between revisions of "User:Apowell1/Language selection"

Latest revision as of 20:13, 18 January 2017

This page details, in order of preference, three languages which I am interested in working on this semester.

Lingala

Basic Information

Lingala is a language used frequently in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of the Congo (Congo). With slightly more than two million native speakers, it is found with greatest frequency in the northwestern portions of the DRC and in the northern half of the Congo.^[1]

Historically, the Congo was a colony of France for the first half of the twentieth century.^[3] Likewise, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was under Belgian rule during a similar time period.^[4] As a result, in both countries, French has maintained prevalence in the present day. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, French remains the official language, with Lingala comprising one of four indigenous languages considered "national languages," Kituba, Swahili, and Tshiluba being the other three.^[5] In the Republic of the Congo, French is the official language, with Lingala and Kituba considered the two national languages.^[6] It would be plausible that speakers of Lingala would know French, or one of the other national languages. Still, only 68.5 % of people in the DRC speak French^[5], so it is far from certain that a speaker of Lingala would know French. As the official language of both countries, it is most likely that locally published material discussing Lingala is in French.

Based on this information, it seems quite clear that Lingala is far from threatened. With more than 2,000,000 native speakers and its designation as a national language in both the DRC and the Congo, it can quite easily be transmitted to future generations.

While Lingala is fairly widely known in many parts of the DRC and the Congo, it is primarily a spoken, rather than a written language. This is, in part, due to the low literacy rates (estimated to be less than 30%) in areas of Africa where Lingala is spoken. As a result, there can be quite a bit of variance in its orthography.^[7] At a most basic level, the Latin alphabet is used. Lingala has seven vowels, with 'e' and 'o' being used to represent a high and low tone version.^[1] Some writing systems use the characters 'ɛ' and 'ɔ' to make this disticntion, but many, including major websites, do not. Additionally, the use of accents can be somewhat inconsistent. Generally, though, Lingala has 35 letters and digraphs, with accents being used on vowels to denote tone.^[7]

Lingala uses ISO code lin.^[7]

Morphological Typology

Lingala can be characterized as agglutinative. This can be seen through study of both nouns and verbs.^[7]

Within Lingala, nouns can be categorized into many classes which are denoted by a prefix. Classes are categorical in nature, though pairs of classes are used to distinguish between singular and plural. For example, the root pési is used to mean servant. If pési is prefixed by mo-, the noun falls in class one and is singular. If bo- prefixes pési, then it falls in class two and is plural.^[7] In this way, one can add prefixes to noun roots to change the word.

Verbs also exhibit a number of agglutinative properties. The ending of a verb can be altered to denote causative, passive, reflexive, and reciprocal verbs. For example, -am- is used to denote passive verbe. koboma means "to kill." Adding the passive ending, Kobomama means "to be killed." More alterations can be made to ensure agreement in tense/number/etc.^[7]

Text Availability

Finding a page's worth of authentic text in Lingala should be straightforward. A Lingala language wikipedia of more than 2,500 articles is maintained here. A textbook published by the Foreign Service Institute containing many example sentences in Lingala and there corresponding English translation can be found here. Excerpts from a Lingala language bible appear to be hosted here.

Samoan

Basic Information

As its name suggests, Samoan is a language used in the Samoan islands, which include the Independent State of Samoa (Samoa) and Territory of American Samoa (American Samoa). Spoken by nearly all of the residents of Samoa and American Samoa, more than 500,000 individuals speak Samoan when considering Samoans living abroad in places such as the United States and New Zealand.^[8]

Samoan is known widely is Samoa and American Samoa, with about 91% of residents speaking it natively.^[10] Still, most people are bilingual, with English as an official language of both Samoa^[11] and American Samoa^[10]. In American Samoa, about 80% of people know English.^[10] Hence, it is fairly straightforward to find written discussion of the Samoan language in English.

Though looking at the absolute number of speakers might suggest Samoan is more threatened that Lingala, the language remains in robust use and is easily transmitted to future generations. The comparatively smaller number of Samoan speakers stems from the fact that there are far fewer people living in Samoa and American Samoa than in the DRC and the Congo. Since over 91% of American Samoans speak Samoan natively, there is no danger of the language disappearing in the near future. Several local newspapers are published in both Samoan and English.^[12]

As the presence of Samoan language newspapers might suggest, Samoan has a well standardized orthography. It dates to the nineteenth century, when Christian missionaries developed an alphabet system in the course of their work in the region.^[12] The developed orthography is quite simple, with an alphabet consisting of only fourteen (Latin) letters. 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', and 'u' comprise the vowels, as in English, and 'f','g','l','m','n','p','s','t', and 'v' complete the remaining nine consonants. A macron is used to distinguish long vowels.^[8]

Samoan uses ISO code smo.^[8]

Morphological Typology

Samoan is classified as isolating^[8], though it still has a number of interesting morphological properties. A small sampling are detailed in this section.

One interesting morphological feature of nouns is the way in which they can be formed using verbs. This is typically done by suffixing a verb with one of -ga, -saga, -taga, -maga, or -'aga. For example, tuli means to drive, but adding -ga to get tuliga yields the English word driving.^[8]

Numbers also can lend themselves to interesting morphologies. Given a verb, repeating the root in a process known as reduplication is often done to distinguish singular and plural forms. For example, savali is Samoan for s/he walks. Savavali is Samoan for they walk.^[8]

A similar process of repeating a root is often used to form adjectives from nouns. For example, knot in Samoan in pona. Knotty is ponapona. Stone is fatu. Stony is fatufatu. Sometimes, a word might be prefixed with fa'a- instead.^[8]

Hence, while Samoan is not as morphologically rich as many languages, it still has a number of interesting properties worth studying.

Text Availability

Finding a page's worth of text in Samoan should be straightforward. There is a small Wikipedia of more than 800 articles available here. Though most articles are quite short, there are a few longer ones. Additionally, there is a bible translation available for download here.

Chamorro

Basic Information

Chamorro is a language spoken primarily in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. It is named for the indigenous Chamorro people, for whom the language is native. Approximately 58,000 people speaking Chamorro worldwide.^[13]

Both Guam^[15] and the Northern Mariana Islands^[16] include English and Chamorro as official languages. As U.S. territories, English is widely known. Indeed, in Northern Mariana Islands especially, there are very few monolinguals, with most people who know Chamorro also familiar with English.^[14] As a result, works about Chamorro are often found published in English.

Unlike Lingala and Samoan, Chamorro is very much a threatened language with a clear trend of decreasing fluency since the early twentieth century. Indeed, at the start of the Spanish-American war in 1898, Chamorro literacy in Guam was 75%. By 2000, this number had dropped to 20%. Most of those still literate in Chamorro are over the age of 55, suggesting a very poor ability to transmit the language between generations. This decline is largely attributable to an early twentieth century ban by the United States on Chamorro language use in school. In more recent years, these restrictions have been lifted, with a 2013 law even requiring Chamorro language instruction through grade 10 in Guam. Still, it is clear from the statistics that the damage has been done and the prevalence of Chamorro greatly diminished.^[13]

Given Chamorro's status as a threatened language, information on its orthography is much more limited than what is available for Lingala and Samoan. The alphabet consists of 23 Latin letters. It includes some consonants, known as germinate consonants, which are written with double letters (e.g 'gg'). An occasional acute accent is used to denote "penultimate stress."^[13]. More recently, to preserve the threatened language, efforts have been made to standardize the orthography used. The complete set of rules, which all government agencies in Guam must adhere to, is available here.

Chamorro has ISO code cha.^[13]

Morphological Typology

Like Lingala, Chamorro is considered an agglutinative language. Though its various morphologies are not documented as well as more popular languages such as Lingala or Samoan, there are still a number of interesting examples worth discussing.

For example, consider the Chamorro word masanganenñaihon. This comes from the root sangan, which means to talk. By prefixing the root with ma, it becomes passive. The suffix ñaihon adds the meaning "a short time." Hence, by adding a subject, gue', one obtains Masanganenñaihon gue' to mean S/he was told (something) for awhile.^[13]

Though lacking readily available published examples, Chamorro includes a fairly extensive system of agreements in gender/number/etc. using various suffixes.^[13]

Text Availability

Chamorro is quite a bit more obscure than Lingala or Samoan, making finding authentic text a more difficult task. Nevertheless, a small Chamorro language wikipedia of slightly more than 400 articles is maintained here.

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} "Lingala". UCLA Language Materials Project. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
2. ↑ "Lingala". Ethnologue. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
3. ↑ The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica (February 15, 1999). "French Congo". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
4. ↑ Jessica Achberger. "Belgian Colonial Education Policy: A Poor Foundation for Stability". The Ultimate History Project. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} Wikipedia Contributors. "Languages of the Democratic Republic of the Congo". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
6. ↑ Wikipedia Contributors. "Languages of the Republic of the Congo". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5} Wikipedia Contributors. "Lingala". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
8. ↑ ^{8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6} Wikipedia Contributors. "Samoan Language". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
9. ↑ "Samoan". Ethnologue. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1 10.2} Wikipedia Contributors. "American Samoa". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
11. ↑ Wikipedia Contributors. "Samoa". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
12. ↑ ^{12.0 12.1} "Samoan". UCLA Language Materials Project. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5} Wikipedia Contributors. "Chamorro Language". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
14. ↑ ^{14.0 14.1} "Chamorro". Ethnologue. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
15. ↑ Wikipedia Contributors. "Guam". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.
16. ↑ Wikipedia Contributors. "Northern Mariana Islands". Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 17, 2017.