How Did English Come to Africa

HOW DID ENGLISH COME TO AFRICA?

INTRODUCTION

Africa prides is self in it's many cultures and wildlife .In this essay I will explore the effects that colonialism had on the traditions of the African people. I will firstly start by explaining how the British came to settle in Africa. Secondly I will show how the English language established itself in Africa and lastly I will examine it's effects on the African people's traditions.

When was Africa's first encounter with English?

The African continent has the most variety of languages than anywhere in the world. And to this variety we also added the white man's language which is English .The first encounter that Africans had with English was in the 1600's when British traders and explores sailed into the West of Africa to trade in ivory, spices and slaves. Africa's earliest contacts with the English language go back to the sixteenth century when sailors of British merchant companies traveled to West Africa to trade in ivory, slaves, and spices. At this stage, English seems to have been an important trade language. A more established presence of English in Africa started with settler communities of native speakers of different.

How did English reach the special position in which it finds itself today?

The language of English rose to the top, as the universe's leading language because of colonialism. And as can be expected, the British travelers and colonizers used their language where ever they laid their heads. Hence English emerged as the approved language for many of the colonies of Britain. During the 20th century, the Americans were busy stealing the rich natural resources such as ivory in the regions that they had been given power to rule. Illiterate African leaders were conned into signing over their sovereignty to the British. There are more than a dozen African countries where English is an official language. These include Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana. Namibia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, South Africa, and Nigeria. But with slang, accents and history in the mix, it's not always easy to understand or be understood when speaking English in Africa. I think it is safe to say that they have spiced up the white man's language in order to keep alive the little that they have left of their cultures.

The Indirect Rule .

Indirect rule, the invention of the British colonial officer Frederick Lugard, became the main system the British used to administer their African colonies (1995). The colonizers used African Chiefs to implement their bad deeds by suppressing their fellow kins men. The British did this by giving the Chief's enormous wealth and status by building them mansions and giving them livestock, livestock that once belonged to the African's but they (colonizers) snatched it from them when they settled in that land. These chosen "African Elites" lived like kings in the expense of their own people. Meanwhile these Chiefs thought that they were ruling a nation, they were in fact just puppets dancing to the tune of the white-man since they just giving out orders from the British to the Africans. Lugard wrongly believed that all the African societies were monarchies and that those that were not could become so with the establishment of chiefdoms.(1995)

How did Blacks come to master the English language?

The British were so adamant that their culture was the most civilized of them all that it decided to chose those Africans that showed great intellectual capacity and potential to go study abroad, in the Netherlands or studied in England. These Scholar ships were funded by Cecil J.Rhodes.He was the founder of The Imperial British East Africa Company that reigned over Namibia, Zimbabwe amongst other African countries. Even after his death, the wealth he left behind was used to send African students with potential abroad. However this was not done out of the goodness of his (their) heart(s).The scholars they sent abroad came back having adapted to the white man's culture. And this led to them persuading their fellow kinsmen that the English people knew best. This sending of people abroad meant that the knowledge gained there will be used to civilize the ones that were not promising enough to go abroad.During the early occupation days, especially after the second occupation when British rule became more permanent, the language of the government, schools, legal system and business was English.

The Settler Rule .

Another system of British colonial administration was the settler rule system that occurred where Britain had large populations of European immigrants. These immigrants settled and established direct rule over the colonies in Africa especially in southern and eastern Africa. They planned to make Africa their permanent home. British settler colonies were founded primarily in South Africa, Southern and Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia), and South-West Africa Nambia.Burman states that: "settlers regarded themselves to be naturally superior to the "natives," as the British called their African colonial subjects". They saw the Africans as people who must be subjected and who were good only for being domestics to the white settlers. The methods of oppression and repression by the European settler populations were not known in precolonial Africa. The Portugues and the French did not regard Africans as animals that needed to be tamed but saw them as human beings who just needed guidiance.

Colonial Domination: Assimilation

The French, for their part, established a highly centralized administrative system that was influenced by their ideology of colonialism and their national tradition of extreme administrative centralism. Their colonial ideology explicitly claimed that they were on a "civilizing mission" to lift the benighted "natives" out of backwardness to the new status of civilized French Africans. To achieve this, the French used the policy of assimilation, whereby through acculturation and education and the fulfillment of some formal conditions, some "natives" would become evolved and civilized French Africans. In practice, the stringent conditions set for citizenship made it virtually impossible for most colonial subjects to become French citizens. For example, potential citizens were supposed to speak French fluently, to have served the French with loyalty and adapted to the French culture swiftly. If they achieved French citizenship, they would have French rights and could only be tried by French courts.

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