Hi Joe
You are right that for literate people it is very important to have a
comparison chart, to help you transliterate words from one version of
the alphabet to another. However if the student is not even literate
in his own language, then we have to start from the beginning anyway
to teach Shaw Literacy.
As for Swahili in S.A., it is a very new thing. Interest in Swahili
only started after the end of Aparteid. It is important in East
Africa. About 50 million people in East and Central Africa,
particularly in Tanzania, Zanzibar and Kenya, all speak Swahili. In
addition, many people in Uganda, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda,
Burundi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo speak Swahili as
a first or second language.
People in S.A. if they are not already literate in English are most
likely to be literate in Afrikaans.
Lets look at English's biggest competitor as a language of the cities
in Afrikaans.
Here is some discussion on the roles of English and Afrikaans in
South Africa. I will provide some background info as most people
assume Afrikaans is just Dutch with a funny accent. Like an American
versus a British Accented English. No such luck. It is not so simple.
English is the first language of more than 3,500,000 people in South
Africa, around 9% of the population . English use is rapidly growing
in comparison to Afrikaans, but the number of people speaking
Afrikaans is still much greater in S.A. as a whole.
Afrikaans is the first language of approximately 65% of South
Africa's whites, and over 90% of the "Coloured" (mixed-race)
population. The majority of black South Africans generally still
speak one of the African Bantu Languages. Swahili is not commonly
used and these older languages tend reinforce existing Tribal
divisions.
Only a third of South Africans speaking an European Language, have
English as their first language.
Large numbers of black, Asian, and English South Africans speak
Afrikaans as a second language. It is also widely spoken in Namibia,
where it has had constitutional recognition as a national, not
official, language since independence in 1990. Prior to independence,
Afrikaans, along with German, had equal status as an official
language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among
Zimbabwe's white minority, but most left the country in 1980.
It will take another generation to see how the Language situation
stabilizes in S.A. Right now the country is in the middle of some
extremely rapid Social changes. English has a higher status for the
Black Majority Population. It is the main means of communication in
urban areas. Many second generation people from India, Portugal,
Germany, and Greece speak English as first language.
Afrikaans is linguistically closely related to 17th century Dutch,
and to modern Dutch by extension. It is similar to Flemish. Speakers
of each language can make themselves easily understood by speakers of
the other. It is much less closely related to German, and
English.The Cape Dutch or Afrikaans vocabulary diverged from the
Dutch vocabulary spoken in the Netherlands over time as Cape Dutch
absorbed words from other European settlers, East Indian slaves, and
native African languages.
The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were not published
until 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaanders (Society for Real
Afrikaners) in Cape Town. Official government proclamation of
Afrikaans as a distinct language from Dutch came in 1925. The
official languages of the Union of South Africa were English and
Dutch until that time. Dutch was replaced as an official language by
Afrikaans.
Besides vocabulary, the most striking difference from Dutch in
Afrikaans is its regularized and simplified grammar,and its
simplified pronunciation and spelling which is likely the result of
mutual interference with some earlier creole language based on the
Dutch language spoken by the relatively large number of non-Dutch
speakers (Khoisan, Khoikhoi, German, French, Malay, and speakers of
different African languages) during the formation period of the
language in the second half of the 17th century. It contains many
words loaned from Indonesian languages, especially Malay (the oldest
known written Afrikaans uses Arabic letters and was intended for use
among Cape Town's Muslims),
Remember, back in 1710, slaves and imported indentured workers in
S.A. significantly outnumbered the free Dutch settlers.
Most linguistics scholars today are almost certain that Afrikaans has
been influenced by a creole language based on the South-Holland Dutch
dialect. It is very hard finding out how this influence took place,
since there is no written material about this S.A. creole or pidgin
from the time. And there are almost no sample sentences written in
the Dutch-based creole language or Proto-Afrikaans.
There are only a few sentences found in unrelated Travel books often
written by non-speakers.
Afrikaans Orthography
Written Afrikaans differs from Dutch in that the spelling reflects a
phonetically simplified language, and so many consonants are dropped.
The spelling is also a lot more phonetical than the Dutch
counterpart. A notable feature is the indefinite article, which
is "'n", not "een" as in Dutch. "A book" is "'n Boek", whereas in
Dutch it would be "Een boek". (Note that "'n" is still allowed in
Dutch; Afrikaans uses only "'n" where Dutch uses it next to "een".
When letters are dropped an apostrophe is mandatory.) Other features
include the use of 's' instead of 'z', hence South Africa in
Afrikaans is written as Suid-Afrika, whereas in Dutch it is Zuid-
Afrika. (This accounts for ZA being used as South Africa's internet
top level domain.) The Dutch letter combination 'ij' is written
as 'y', except where it replaces the Dutch suffix -lijk, as in
waarschijnlijk = waarskynlik.
Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African
English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South
African English, such as "veld", "braai", "boomslang", "shambeen"
and "lekker". A few words in standard English are derived from
Afrikaans, such as "trek", "spoor", and, of course, apartheid.
In 1976, rioting broke out in Soweto as the result of the apartheid
government's requirement that Afrikaans rather than English be used
as the medium of instruction in black schools. See History of South
Africa.
Under South Africa's multiracial Constitution of 1994, Afrikaans
remained an official language, but there were now nine other official
languages with which it now had equal status. The new dispensation
meant that Afrikaans was often downgraded by, in favour of English,
or to accommodate the new official languages. In 1996, for example,
the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of
television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped
its Afrikaans name Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens from its livery.
Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now only
display the name of the country in English and their host country's
language, but not in Afrikaans.
Although these moves have, understandably, angered Afrikaans
speakers, the language has remained strong, with newspapers and
magazines in the language continuing to have wide circulations, and a
pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet being launched in 1999.
Afrikaans has the benefit of being a simpler languange than English
to learn, with simpler grammar, pronunciation and spelling than
English.
It will take another generation to see how the Language situation
stabilizes in S.A. Right now the country is in the middle of some
extremely rapid Social changes. The Shaw Alphabet might be a
contributing factor in enabling a larger percentage of the adult
population becoming literate in English.
It has the additional benefit of providing a clear distinction
between Afrikaans spelling and English Spelling. Because of a shared
history, many English and Afrikaans words are spelled the same even
tho they may have a different vowel pronunciation.
A sentence that is written the same in Afrikaans as in English:
Was my pen in my hand?
It has the same meaning but sounds quite different, even tho it is
written with the same letters.
Quite confusing, eh.
Another good reason for switching to English written in the Shavian
Alphabet.
Please let me know if you have any questions?
Regards, Paul V.
--- In shavian@..., "Joe" <allegrox_2000@y...> wrote:
>
> That's exactly my point. I have been looking at Swahili, though,
> and it appears to me that Shavian could come very close, with the
> addition of kh and gh letters. I don't suggest imposing Shavian on
> other languages that have decent spelling already, but I thought it
> was interesting to note that, if it weren't for the lack of these
> letters, Shavian would do a better job there, too. But I still
> think we need a way to write these languages, at least for use in
> pronunciation guides.
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