Language contact: The influence of English and French on the native languages of Ghana and Togo
Abstract
The phenomenon of language contact (LC) has received a considerable attention from many researchers in the field of linguistics. Weinreich (1974), for example, examined the structural and non–structural factors that encourage or discourage interference in a bilingual discourse, drawing examples from speech communities in America, Europe, Africa and others. In contact situations, speakers of a less privileged language may prefer to speak a more privileged language at the expense of theirs. When the younger generations start preferring a dominant language, and learn theirs imperfectly, their language is said to be potentially endangered (Wurm 2000). With today’s globalization that has put economic, social and political powers in the hands of the speakers of the large languages of the world (Adejunmobi 2004 and Austin and Andrew 2007), the influence of English and French (two of the major languages of the world) on African languages would be a very interesting area to look into. Among the consequences resulting from the contact between Europe and Africa, the problems of values, urbanization and environment have received the most attention. However, linguistic change in the ecology of the local languages is one of the common consequences. In an advanced contact situation, the speakers of the native languages are not able to speak their native languages without switching to or borrowing from the more privileged ones, a phenomenon that Thomason (2001) describes as one of the signs of the eventual death of a language. In this work, I explore evidences to establish that English and French have a lot of influence on the local languages of Ghana and Togo and that the youth are not able to speak their local languages without the influence of the former. Secondly I intend, through this work, to contribute to the research in language contact phenomenon (LCP) in Ghana and Togo, an area that has received little attention in the communities under study as far as publications are concerned. The research was conducted on the speakers of Asante Twi in Ghana and Tem in Togo. The conversations of 3 youth from each country including anecdotal data from radio stations were recorded to provide a structural analysis of the contact situations. Questionnaires were distributed to another 18 youth, 9 from each country and one elderly person from each country was interviewed. The result of the study points to the fact that, indeed, the phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic characteristics of Twi and Tem have a considerable amount of influence from English and French languages.
Degree
M.A.
Advisors
Brown, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Linguistics
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