Youth languages are found in many parts of Africa. By studying the ways in which young people use language we can understand more about how youth languages emerge and how language change works. This project focuses on the Bantu speaking area. This is a vast area in Africa which hosts between 450-600 languages which are closely related and spans central, eastern and southern Africa.
African youth language practices have been studied more intensively in the last 30 years. Youth language refers to specific innovative ways that young people use language and that differs from “standard” language. Studying the creative strategies that speakers employ helps us to better understand language change. In Africa, there are many named youth languages that serve as important markers of identity in multilingual societies.
Microvariation is an approach that looks at morphosyntactic variation, which means the ways in which people use words and grammatical markers to create sentences and complex meanings. Specific features that we are looking at in this project include:
The Bantu languages constitute a group of some 450-600 languages spoken across much of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. There is a long tradition of comparative work on the Bantu languages, dating back to at least the 19th century. Much of the early work was concerned with classification and tracing historical developments, and was primarily based on lexical and phonological data. The last twenty years have seen a significant advancement in our understanding of variation in Bantu languages in relation to morphosyntax.
The project is structured around four key questions which seek to identify commonalities and differences in youth language practices found in the regions under examination. It asks:
The project focuses on four languages:
and its youth languages Sheng, Lugha ya Mtaani, Yabacrâne and Kindubile
and its youth languages (Lingala ya Bayankee, Kindoubil, Langila)
with their speakers’ youth languages (Iscamtho/Scamto, S’ncamtho)
and its youth language Chibrazi
Kiswahili is a widespread language spoken in several eastern African countries by at least 100 million people. Kiswahili has long played a crucial role as a lingua franca throughout the region and exhibits a lot of historic and current variation.
1 of 4 LingalaLingala is a contact language spoken by at least 40 million speakers. It emerged in the Congo Basin during the 19th century. A widely recognised language of music, media, popular culture and the police/military across the country, Lingala plays an important role in youth language practices and exhibits interesting variations.
2 of 4 isiNdebele & isiZuluIsiNdebele and IsiZulu are two closely related languages spoken in Zimbabwe and South Africa respectively. IsiZulu is well-documented and spoken by about 10-15 million people while Zimbabwean isiNdebele is spoken by about 5 million people.
Chichewa is spoken by around 12 million people. It is the national language and the most commonly spoken language in Malawi.
The project brings together an international team of experts and is structured around four streams of work. The team in the UK will lead the workstream focusing on Kiswahili and the team in Germany will lead the workshop focusing on Lingala. The two teams will work jointly on isiZuluisiNdebele, as well as a final comparative stream. Crucial to the project is the involvement of international experts and close collaboration partners based on the continent.