Im fascinated by how many “living languages” there are in Africa. Are there that many rural living people who speak the same local language in their village? Do most countries have a national language mostly everyone speaks and most people are bilingual? How “living” are these languages? In big cities is it one language mainly or two or three..?
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Multilingualism is much more common than in the US, for one. For two, there’s usually one or at most a few lingua francas, so everyone at least knows their local language and one shared language. Education is often in this shared language, and it’s often English or French.
A large number of languages like this was the norm for pretty much everywhere in history. European countries actively promoted the languages that became French, or Italian, as they moved from decentralized feudal kingdoms to nation-states that were expected to have a single shared culture. Other regional languages or dialects were actively discouraged, and the remnants that haven’t quite died out are still contentious today – look at the Basque region of Spain, the Britons in France, the near-extinction and revivals of the Welsh, Scotch and Cornish languages in Britain. A Nigerian government *could* decide to do the same, and heavily promote everyone only speaking English or Igbo.
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