While English is what the Common Wealth countries have in common, there are lots of the African English Language varieties spoken by the African countries taking part in this year’s Gold Coast Common Wealth games!
So there are 18 African countries taking part in the commenced 2018 Common Wealth games taking place in Australia which is good News considering that Africa is working at being the center of the Global Village so to say.
Speaking of getting out there, England was mistaken for Gambia; an African country in the programme lay out. The mishap included claiming that England has a population of 2 million with its capital city being Banjul which information belongs to Gambia. It is a fact that Gambia was added back to the Common Wealth fraternity after it pulled out in 2013.
English is referred to as a language of unity among the Common Wealth countries all over the world and therefore happens to be an official language in almost all these countries although there are some countries where other languages are significant.
This at times is as result of these countries have not been colonized by the British back when the scramble and partition of Africa took place. There are those countries that were colonized by the English then later taken over by some other nationalities.
Therefore such countries decided later on to join the Common Wealth fraternity and so decided to take on the African English language as well. An example here is Mozambique which joined Common Wealth in the year 1996. It should be noted that African Portuguese is the most significant language in Mozambique in fact, very few people can perfectly express themselves in the English language here.
English is the language of these countries but there are so many varieties of English as influenced by the culture and indigenous languages of a certain country.
East African English; This is English spoken in countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan although the one spoken in Uganda happens to be the best when it comes to pronunciation and grammar. Yes, Uganda is said to be the best speaking English country on the African continent. This is because the English spoken in East Africa is not as heavily influenced by the indigenous languages like it is in West Africa.
Other languages common in East Africa and translation services that should be considered by entrepreneurs and businesses looking to expand here include;
West African English; this one is a very unique kind of English and has further been pushed into the lime light by the booming Film industries in this part of Africa and they include Nollywood in Nigeria and Ghallywood in Ghana. Here the English is heavily influenced by the local languages and communication with other English speaking countries may not be as effective for communication purposes. Services and languages to be looked out for include;
Africa is heavily represented in terms of numbers in the Gold Coast Common Wealth games with Kenya having 132 athletes, Nigeria having 90 and Uganda having 69 of them.
By Angela Kyolaba
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