Comments on: Technology vs Tribal Languages in Africa

By: Luke

Luke — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 22:19:35 +0000

Aggh, sorry about the formatting, my touchpad is hypersensitive (can’t turn the damn thing off either, I apparently got the one model that doesn’t allow it) and I didn’t catch that before posting.

By: Luke

Luke — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 22:18:00 +0000

I’ll add that Congo and the western part of The Congo speak Lingala, the eastern part Swahili, as the lingua franca.

And people probably speak their native languages at home too.

Same situtation, French is official, but little used outside the upper circles.

Nigeria certainly speaks Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and whatnot.

I’m guessing that that holds true for most of Africa, aside from a few countries like South Africa and Senegal where European influence was strongest.

And Arabic is only really spo ken in the north of Sudan, south Sudan’s traditional and some English,from what I’ve read.

I’m guessing that that map reflects the official languages only, not the actually languages spoken.

By: HASH

HASH — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 01:56:29 +0000

I didn’t know that, but I also didn’t make the map. 🙂

I’m guessing that there are a lot of irregularities in it. Let’s face it, Africa is BIG. Almost everyone who tries to describe Africa as a whole misses things. I know I do.

So, let me beat a dead horse some more: all the more reason to provide a country/tribe-agnostic platform. That way you don’t need to customize it for the regional uses, the people there do it for themselves.

By: thakadu

thakadu — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 19:03:10 +0000

Hi Hash, insightful article, just one comment on the colours on your map! The colour for Botswana should be mostly yellow. There are roughly 1.5 million people living in Botswana and although the official langauge for government business is Enlgish, it is almost no-one’s first lanuage.

Regards