Abstract
THE International Institute of African Languages and Cultures publishes in the July number of Africa a survey of linguistic questions relating to Africa, which includes a number of tasks with which the Institute is concerned. The issue by the Institute of a “Short Guide to the Recording of African Languages” has produced results of no little importance in their bearing on the study and classification of African languages. Prof. D. Westerman has compiled a list of no less than thirty-one previously and little-known languages which have been recorded through its use. This material has been sent to the Institute. Some will be published; the remainder, with such additional linguistic material as may accrue from time to time, will be available at the Institute for consultation by students. A valuable indication of the linguistic work already done, and of the field still to be covered in this department of investigation in Negro Africa, will be afforded by a series of articles which is to appear in Africa. The first in the current issue is a survey by Dr. Johannes Lukas of linguistic research between the Nile and Lake Chad. In addition to pointing out the regions to which future research can most usefully be directed, the series will serve as a preliminary classification of African languages. An interesting problem is discussed by Prof. C. M. Doke, who deals with the position and relation of European and Bantu languages in South Africa. While he admits that owing to political and economic factors European languages, and especially English, are ousting Bantu, he maintains that certain of the Bantu languages will persist for their cultural value in literary development and their private, family, and devotional use. Other contributions to this issue of Africa deal with indigenous literature, the study of intonation and of phonetics, and the facilities for the study of African languages in Great Britain, on the Continent and in South Africa. Consideration of the relation between language study and anthropology is reserved for future consideration.
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African Linguistics. Nature 144, 437 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144437b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144437b0