There are anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. Most commonly these are divided into four major language groupings (cfr Greenberg 1966, Heine & Nurse 2000).
However, a simple four-way division betrays the fact that much of Africa's linguistic history as well as the relationships between languages and some language groupings are not yet fully understood. Much work on these issues still remain to be done.
There are several "non-African" languages spoken in Africa (e.g. Malagasy, English, French, etc.), as well as many pidgins/creoles and other "new" languages. Moreover, many (indigenously) African languages are yet to be satisfactorily classified.
The adjoining map depicts a slightly more skeptical view on the African language situation than that of the traditional Greenbergian view.
The links on this page (which follow the section with references to printed sources immediately below) have been grouped into three categories:
- Words, dictionaries, terminologies
- Pronunciation, phonetics, phonology, tones, orthographies
- Grammar, morphology, syntax
- Miscellaneous, general, unsorted
- Online communities, mailing lists, weblogs, etc.
- Useful link collections
This simple categorisation may need to be refined.
A SELECTION OF PRINTED SOURCES
Childs, George Tucker. 2004. An introduction to African linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. The languages of Africa. 2nd edition. Mouton & Co.
Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek. (Eds.) 2000. African languages: an introduction. Cambridge University Press.
Heine, Bernd; Nurse, Derek. (Eds.) 2004. Les langues africaines. Editions Karthala.
Heine, Bernd; Schadeberg, Thilo C.; Wolff, Ekkehard. (Eds.) 1981. Die Sprachen Afrikas, 6 Bde. Helmut Buske Verlag.
Maho, Jouni Filip. 2001. African languages country by country: a reference guide. 5th edition. Department of Oriental and African Languages, Göteborg University.
Maho, Jouni Filip. 2004. How many languages are there in Africa, really? In: Globalisation and African languages (ed. by Katrin Bromber & Birgit Smieja), p. 279-296. Mouton de Gruyter.
Mann, Michael; Dalby, David. (Eds.) 1987. A thesaurus of African languages. Hans Zell Publishers and K G Saur Verlag.
Mous, Maarten. 2003. Loss of linguistic diversity in Africa. In: Language death and language maintenance (ed. by Mark Janse & Sijmen Tol), p. 157-170. Amsterdam & John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Mutaka, Ngessimo M.; Tamanji, Pius Ngwa. 2000. An introduction to African linguistics. Lincom Europa.
Perrot, Jean. (Ed.) 1981. Les langues dans le monde ancien et moderne, v. 1: les languages de l'Afrique subsaharienne. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).
Sebeok, Thomas A. (Ed.) 1971. Current trends in linguistics, v. 7: linguistics in sub-Saharan Africa. Mouton & Co.
Sommer, Gabi. 1992. A survey on language death in Africa. In: Language death: factual and theoretical explorations with special reference to East Africa (ed. by Matthias Brenzinger), p. 301-417. Mouton de Gruyter.
Your dictionary - prev. "Web of On-Line Dictionaries".
www.yourdictionary.com
Pierre Alexandre, 1983
Sur quelques problèmes pratiques d'onomastique africaine: toponymie, anthroponymie, ethnonymie. Cahiers d'études africaines, v. 23, p. 175-188.
www.persee.fr/showIssue.do?issueKey=cea_0008-0055_1983_num_23_89
Edema Atibakwa Baboya, 2001
Terminologie européenne et terminologie africaine: éléments de comparaison (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 21, p. 32-38.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Roger M. Blench
The problem of Pan-African roots (PDF). Mallam Dendo, Cambridge.
www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm
Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 1996
Des lanques de données terminologiques en Afrique francophone (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 15, p. 116-120.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Chantal Enguehard, Chérif Mbodj, 2003
Flore: un site coopératif pour recueillir et diffuser les noms des plantes dans les langues africaines (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 23, p. 46-55.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Nazam Halaoui, 1991
La terminologie des langues africaines: esquisse d'une problématique (PDF). Meta, v. 36, p. 291-300.
www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1991/v36/n1/002998ar.pdf
André Jacquot, 1956
La transcription des toponyms africains (PDF).
www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_7/carton03/11382.pdf
Antoine Lipou, 1997
Dictionnaires multilingues généraux en langues africaines (PDF). Meta, v. 42, p. 264-272.
www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1997/v42/n2/003511ar.pdf
James Roberts, Keith L. Snider, 2006
SIL comparative African wordlists - SILCAWL (PDF). SIL electronic working paper SILEWP 2006-005.
www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2006-005
Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, 2003
Web for/as corpus: a perspective for the African languages (PDF). Nordic journal of African studies, v. 11, p. 266-282.
www.njas.helsinki.fi
Henry Tourneux, 1992
Noms de peuples et noms de langues d'Afrique noire dans le petit Larousse illustré 1992 (PDF). Politique africaine, n. 47, p. 153-161.
www.politique-africaine.com/numeros/pdf/047153.pdf
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Pronunciation, phonetics, phonology, tones, orthographies
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African fonts, maintained by Luc Devroye. School of Computer Science, McGill University.
jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/africa.html
UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive has many sound files (with accompanying wordlists) for several African languages.
archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/main2.htm
Steven Bird, 1999
Strategies for representing tone in African writing systems (PDF). Written language and literacy, v. 2, p. 1-44.
cogprints.org/2174
C. Chanard
Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines d'après "Alphabets des langues africaines", Unesco-SIL 1993. LLACAN (Langage, Langues et Cultures d'Afrique Noire).
sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono
Bruce Connell, 2001
Downdrift, downstep and declination (PDF). Paper presented at TAPS (Typology of African Prosodic Systems), University of Bielefeld, May 2001.
www.spectrum.uni-bielefeld.de/TAPS/Connell.pdf
Laura J. Downing, 2004
What African languages tell us about accent typology (PDF). ZAS (Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft) papers in linguistics, v. 37, p. 101-136.
www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/papers/zaspil/articles/zp37/zp37-downing.pdf
Ursula Drolc
Vokalharmonie in afrikanischen Sprachen - Literaturliste. Institut für Afrikanistik, Universität zu Köln.
www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/afrikanistik/forschung/ressourcen/vokalharmonie/index.shtml
Larry M. Hyman
African languages and phonological theory (PDF). University of California at Berkeley.
linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/GLOT_Phonology_African_Lgs.pdf
André Jacquot, 1956
L'orthographe française et la transcription des langues vernaculaires (PDF).
www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_5/b_fdi_16-17/22894.pdf
André Jacquot, 1956
La transcription des toponyms africains (PDF).
www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_7/carton03/11382.pdf
Peter Ladefoged
Vowels and consonants. Sound files for several African languages. UCLA Phonetics Lab.
hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants
William R. Leben, 2006
Rethinking autosegmental phonology (PDF). From: Selected proceedings of the 35th annual conference on African linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/35/index.html
Kenneth S. Olson, John Hajek, 2001
The geographic and genetic distribution of the labial flap (PDF). SIL electronic working paper SILEWP 2001-002.
www.sil.org/silewp/2001/002
Conrad Taylor, 2000
Typesetting African languages.
www.ideography.co.uk/library/afrolingua.html
African Anaphora Project. Linguistics Department, Rutgers University.
www.africananaphora.rutgers.edu
Denis Creissels, 2005
A typology of subject marker and object marker systems in African languages (PDF). From: Studies in African linguistic typologies. Edited by F. Voeltz. John Benjamins Publ.
www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Annuaires/PDF/Creissels/Creissels_2005_SM-OM.pdf
Bernd Heine, 1986
The rise of grammatical categories: cognition and language change in Africa (PDF). Hans Wolff memorial lecture series, n. 16. African Studies Program, Indiana University.
hdl.handle.net/2022/294
Neil Skinner, 1997
*'dyi/*'gyi, *ma' and *am in non-Khoisan African languages (PDF). From: L'homme et l'eau dans le bassin du lac Tchad. Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique dčOutre-Mer (ORSTOM).
www.bondy.ird.fr/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_6/colloques2/010012364.pdf
African languages, according to SIL's Ethnologue.
www.ethnologue.com/country_index.asp?place=Africa
African languages, article at Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_languages
African language technology (AfLaT).
aflat.org
African languages: maps, at Mutur Zikin.
www.muturzikin.com/carteafrique.htm
Bisharat! - language, technology, and development initiative. Maintained by Don Osborn.
www.bisharat.net
WEB-BALL = WEB Bibliography for African Languages and Linguistics, maintained by Guillaume Segerer, with help from Jouni Maho.
sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/Biblio/index.html
Webbook of African language resources. Michigan State University.
www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html
Pierre Alexandre, 1961
Problémes linguistiques des états négro-africains à l'heure de l'independance. Cahiers d'études africaines, v. 2, p. 177-195.
www.persee.fr/showIssue.do?issueKey=cea_0008-0055_1961_num_2_6
Pierre Alexandre, 1961
Note sur quelques problèmes d'ethnolinguistique. L'homme, v. 1 (1), p. 102-106.
www.persee.fr/showIssue.do?issueKey=hom_0439-4216_1961_num_1_1
Thomas Bearth, 2000
Afrikanische Sprachen übers Internet lernen (PDF). Unijournal - die Zeitung der Universität Zürich, n. 5, p. 13+20.
www.unicom.unizh.ch/journal/archiv/pdf/2000/unijournal-2000-5.pdf
Roger M. Blench
Language death in West Africa (PDF). Mallam Dendo, Cambridge.
www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm
Birgit Brock-Utne, 2002
Language, democracy, and education in Africa (PDF). Discussion paper 15, from the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) in Uppsala.
130.238.24.99/webbshop/epubl/dp/dp015.pdf
Robert Chaudenson, 2004
La graphisation des langues africaines (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 24, p. 66-67.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Herbert Chimhundu, 2002
Intergovernmental conference on language policies in Africa: final report (PDF). Unesco report. Web-version edited by Karsten Legère.
www.african.gu.se/downloads/hararedoc.pdf
André Clas, Jean Baudot, 1984
Développement des langues africaines: de Yaoundé à Zanzibar (PDF). Meta, v. 29, p. 212-216.
www.erudit.org/revue/meta/1984/v29/n2/002291ar.pdf
Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 2004
Multilinguisme et politiques linguistiques en Afrique (PDF). Colloque Développement Durable, Ouagadougou.
www.francophonie-durable.org/documents/colloque-ouaga-a1-diki-kidiri.pdf
Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 2004
Les langues africaines sur la Toile (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 24, p. 46-48.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 2004
La recherche sur l'informatisation des langues africaines (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 24, p. 65.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Marcel Diki-Kidiri, Edema Atibakwa Baboya, 2003
Les langues africaines sur la toile (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 23, p. 5-32.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Karl Erland Gadelii, 2004
Annotated statistics on linguistic policies and practices in Africa (PDF). Unesco report.
www.african.gu.se/downloads/gadeliireport.pdf
Pius Hasha, 1974
African linguistics: London and Paris trends. Cahiers d'études africaines, v. 14, p. 753-755.
www.persee.fr/showIssue.do?issueKey=cea_0008-0055_1974_num_14_56
Bernd Heine, Matthias Brenzinger
UNESCO Red Book on Endangered Languages: Africa.
www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/Redbook/Africa/AF_index.cgi
Stephen Huffman
World language phyla/family mapping.
www.gmi.org/wlms/users/huffman
Larry M. Hyman, 2003
Why describe African languages? (PDF). Keynote address at the World Congress of African Linguistics & Annual Conference of African Linguistics, Rutgers University, June 18, 2003.
linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/Rutgers_Paper_Why_Describe3.pdf
Lansana Keita, 1999
Africa and its linguistic problematic (PDF). Quest: an African journal of philosophy, v. 13, p. 27-36.
www.quest-journal.net/1999.htm
Jacques Leclerc
L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde: Afrique.
www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/afrique/afracc.htm
Peter Limb
Book review: 'Publishing in African languages: challenges and prospects' by Philip G. Altbach & Damtew Teferra, 1999. H-Net book review, July 2000.
www.h-net.org/reviews
Abdulaziz Y. Lodhi, 1993
The language situation in Africa today (PDF). Nordic journal of African studies, v. 2 (1), p. 79-86.
www.njas.helsinki.fi
Jouni Filip Maho
Pre-1920 literature on sub-Saharan languages and peoples (PDF). Draft bibliography.
goto.glocalnet.net/eball/eballoldstuff.pdf
Thaddeus Menang, 2001
Which language(s) for African literature: a reappraisal. Trans: Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften, n. 11.
www.inst.at/trans/11Nr/menang11.htm
John Mugane, 2006
Necrolinguistics: the linguistically stranded (PDF). From: Selected proceedings of the 35th annual conference on African linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/35/index.html
Jacques Ngangala Balade Tongamba, 2001
Technologie de l'information et langues africaines: lieux des enjeux existentiels (PDF). Cahiers du Rifal, v. 22, p. 5-9.
www.rifal.org/3_information.html
Donald Z. Osborn, 2006
African languages and information and communication technologies: literacy, access, and the future (PDF). From: Selected proceedings of the 35th annual conference on African linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/35/index.html
Karen von Otterloo
Book review: 'African voices' edited by Vic Webb & E. Kembo-sure. SIL electronic book review SILEBR 2003-012.
www.sil.org:8090/silebr/2003/silebr2003-012
Helma Pasch
Das Internet als Forschungsinstrument für die Afrikanistik. Afrikanistik Online, 2004.
www.afrikanistik-online.de
Kwesi Kwaa Prah, 2002
Going native: language of instruction for education, development and African emancipation. Keynote address presented to the Launch Workshop of Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA), Morogoro, Tanzania: 22nd to 24th April 2002.
www.casas.co.za/papers_native.htm
Kwesi Kwaa Prah, 2003
Language, neo-colonialism and the African development challenge. From: TRIcontinental (Havana, Cuba), no 150, 2002.
www.casas.co.za/papers_language.htm
Zaline Makini Roy-Campbell, 2006
The state of African languages and the global language politics: empowering African languages in the era of globalization (PDF). From: Selected proceedings of the 36th annual conference on African linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/36/index.html
Terri Scruggs, 1980
Notes on African linguistics (PDF). Work papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota session, n. 24, p. 142-169.
eric.ed.gov (ED357615)
John E. Stark
Book review: 'African languages' edited by Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse, 2000. SIL electronic book review SILEBR 2004-002.
www.sil.org:8090/silebr/2004/silebr2004-002
Ekkehard Wolff, 2000
Pre-school child multilingualism and its educational implications in the African context (PDF). PRAESA (Project for Alternative Education in South Africa) occasional papers, n. 4. University of Cape Town.
web.uct.ac.za/depts/praesa/OP.htm
Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, 2006
The inventions of African identities and languages: the discursive and developmental implications (PDF). From: Selected proceedings of the 36th annual conference on African linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/36/index.html
A12n-collaboration - African languages & ICT technical working group, hosted by Bisharat.
lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/a12n-collaboration
AfLaT (African language technology) forum.
aflat.org/?q=forum
African languages - Yahoo group for African language reading and writing.
groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages
Bisharat's discussion boards on specific African languages & ICT.
www.quicktopic.com/share?s=QSpo
Google in various African languages.
www.google.com/language_tools
Sociolingo's Africa, a weblog.
sociolingo.wordpress.com
Wikipedia in various African languages.
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
SEE ALSO...
The Linguist List, their list of mailinglists, as well as their mailinglist archives
The H-Net discussion network
A long list of lists at Bisharat
African languages and linguistics on the Internet - Africa south of the Sahara. Stanford University.
www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/lang.html
African language resources on the Internet, Columbia University Libraries.
www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/langs.html
African languages, University of Wisconsin.
polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/lss/lang/african.html
Bisharat's annotated list of links / Liste annotée des liens, maintained by Don Osborn.
www.bisharat.net/links.htm
The LinguistList.
linguistlist.org
Webbook of African language resources. Michigan State University.
www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html
Yale Guide to resources in African languages and literature.
www.yale.edu/ycias/african/ygrall/index.htm
Your dictionary - prev. "Web of On-Line Dictionaries".
www.yourdictionary.com
