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This chapter explores the extent to which two factors mentioned by White—migrant labour and British administration—and two others not mentioned by him—Christianity and education—have affected the development of one of the major languages of Zambia—Bemba. It demonstrates that the migration of people from the rural to the urban area, and vice versa, has had a sort of 'double-edged' diffusional effect on the language in that, to a considerable extent, word borrowing in Bemba has not been uni-directional. The main group of loanwords in Bemba appear to be the result, predominantly of Arab-Bemba, and, on the other, predominantly of European-Bemba, contact. While attributing most Swahili loan-words in Bemba to Bemba-Arab contact, it must be remembered that not all such loan-words were due to this contact. There are other loan-words in Bemba of Swahili origin which, in the absence of factual evidence to the contrary, one could attribute directly to Bemba-Arab contact.

The present study is a pilot phonemic analysis which attempts primarily to establish an inventory of phonemic contrasts in Bemba. Also referred to as Chibemba, the term Bemba is used to cover several regional variants of the language. (The variant examined in this study is known as "Central Bemba," spoken in the Kasama District and contiguous areas of the Northern Province of Zambia.) The main content of this work, which "does not purport to be either definitive or exhaustive but rather tentative and suggestive" since it is based on a limited corpus, is concerned with the setting up of segmental and suprasegmental phonemes. Also treated are phonemic distribution and syllable structure. Wherever considered relevant, morphological and syntactical levels have been taken into account. (AMM)

After attaining political independence from their erstwhile colonial masters, a major preoccupation for all ex-colonial African countries has been the formulation of national policies (economic, educational, political, social, etc.) considered appropriate to their mode of national development. None of these has proved more difficult to achieve than the formulation of language policies that reflect the complex multilingual contexts of these countries. The present paper is an attempt to identify the causal factors that have led to this state of affairs. Part One deals with the historical background, and attempts to trace some sources of the problems that continue to complicate the process of language policy formulation. Part Two deals with present realities, and Zimbabwe and South Africa are used to illustrate ex-colonial African countries trying to formulate a comprehensive language policy. The two parts are linked by the observation that past and lingering societal perceptions, and consequently attitudina...

Building on previous studies in Uganda and Ethiopia, described in some detail in the text, this study seeks as a primary objective to assess the variables which best serve to predict between-language intelligibility among speakers speaking related languages. Secondarily, it aims at repeating the Ugandan and Ethiopian experiments to test whether they have universal applicability. The languages selected for the Zambian experiment were Bemba, Kaonde, Lozi, Lunda, Luvale, Nyanja and Tonga, officially prescribed for use in education, literacy, and broadcasting. The study required participants to listen to prerecorded passages in the seven test languages and then to give appropriate responses in English to questions based on what had been heard. Only responses of participants without prior exposure to other languages and whose answers therefore were presumed to be based solely on their knowledge of their mother tongue were analyzed. The listening-comprehension results suggest that without prior exposure there is very little between-language intelligibility among Bemba, Lozi, Nyanja and Tonga. Secondly, the findings of this study support in the main those of previous studies in Uganda and Ethiopia. They demonstrate that between-language intelligibility can be related immediately to linguistic measures, viz., shared vocabulary and combined root-and-grammatical morpheme correspondences. The non-linguistic variable, geographical proximity, was found not to be a reliable factor for predicting intelligibility.

In returning once again to an old theme and a familiar and much discussed topic one is keenly conscious of the danger of harping on, as one observer has labelled it, a “tired refrain.” The present revisit is predicated on the simple premise that, though no new ground is broken or fundamentally fresh issues raised, the problem is an intractable one, recurrent and pervasive, and consequently, if for no other reason, deserves one more round of attention. There is also the point, as Colson has aptly observed, that “the world is not an easy place” and abounds in social scientists and others who “share in the questioning of purposes and values.” Indeed, while what is raised in this paper might bear a distressing resemblance to arguments we have heard before, it is important to remember that to the communities who bear much of the brunt of the research conducted by foreign scholars, ethical, moral, and related issues surrounding foreigner-dominated research continue to constitute a critical area for concern and therefore a legitimate topic for sustained criticism and inquiry. Many African universities, for instance, have established ‘research affiliate schemes’ as an important, indeed integral, component of their academic functions, but in the course of operating these schemes philosophical and practical issues have arisen, many of which await satisfactory answers.It would, however, be wrong to suggest that these concerns remain the preoccupation of academics alone, because in practical terms what a university does inevitably affects the wider public and in consequence arouses their interest and curiosity. A good example of this interest by the wider public in the affairs of the university, with specific reference to research and foreign scholars, is provided vividly and colorfully by an article written by Peter Mwaura which appeared in The Sunday Post, an East African newspaper.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the role of languages in development. In approaching contemporary problems of political and social conflict, it is believed that it is the tribes and the languages in themselves that are responsible for the social ills in the country. In much of the current socio-linguistic and related literature, it is commonplace to attribute to language inherent qualities, whether positive or negative, which it does not possess. There are two statements that could be made about language with a measure of absolute certitude. The first is that whether at local, regional or international level, a common language facilitates communication. The second is that to the extent that a group of people sentimentally identify with it, language can be a source of social solidarity. A language as a unifying or disintegrative factor is conditional and contingent upon many social factors. From the point of view of national unity or disunity, a national language alone is not the answer.

In 1966, in the aftermath of national independence from colonial rule in 1964, the Zambian government enacted, as a temporary phase of a comprehensive Education Act, a policy that prescribed the English inherited from the former British colonial administration as the sole medium of instruction at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of formal education, thereby breaking away totally from previous practice. Since then the policy has been the subject of sustained informed debate and scholarly research (Africa, 1980; M. M. Chishimba, 1980, 1981, 1984; P. C. Chishimba, 1979; Higgs, 1979, 1980; Kashoki, 1979; McAdam, 1973; Ministry of Higher Education, 1984; Shana, 1980; Sharma, 1973). In the light of this rich proliferation of literature on the implications of imparting early literacy to children by means of a foreign/second language, it is unnecessary to extend the same debate in the present chapter. Instead, it is more profitable to turn our attention to an equally intriguing topic and consider from various vantage points whether the now almost sacrosanct notion of the imperative need to impart literacy skills through the mother tongue does not invite serious second thoughts. In more direct terms, does the concept of the mother tongue as a sine qua non in the imparting of literacy skills in both early formal and nonformal (such as adult literacy) education not generate more problems than it solves? Isn’t there, therefore, a timely need to reexamine the issue to ascertain its far-reaching implications, especially in the context of multilingual societies?