African Language Review

D. Dalby

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780714623320
• eBook ISBN: 9781136266645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Sierra Leone Language Review is the African Language Journal of Fourah Bay College, the University College of Sierra Leone. The Journal is devoted to the detailed study of languages in Sierra Leone and neighbouring areas of West Africa, and also to the more general study and discussion of African languages and language-problems.

Vestiges of Portuguese in the Languages of Sierra Leone

A. T. VON S. BRADSHAW

INTEREST in the classification of the languages of Africa has tended to concentrate the attention of scholars on the fundamental vocabulary and grammar, which provide the evidence for deciding genetic relationships. The available descriptive material, however, increasing rapidly in volume and accuracy, also offers plenty of scope for the investigation of the historical and cultural traces embedded in language. We may quote the example of English used by Greenberg in his Studies in African Linguistic Classification and apply it differently:

Even in English where we are told that foreign vocabulary amounts to sixty to seventy per cent of the lexicon, non-Anglo-Saxon words have barely touched the fundamental vocabulary.¹

If the philologist is mainly concerned with the Anglo-Saxon words and grammatical systems, which enable him to demonstrate the Germanic origin and affinities of English, the historian using philological evidence can find in the large ‘foreign’ vocabulary information no less valuable. Even in the complete absence of other historical records it would be possible, from a rigorous examination of the word-stock, not only to infer the fact of the Norman Conquest but also to assess in some measure the effect it had on English life. In most parts of Africa historical records comparable to those which we have of the Norman period are largely absent and the clues carried down from the past by language assume correspondingly greater importance.

Unfortunately, though the word-stock of a language may contain precious traces of the past, these will inevitably be found in a state of complete confusion. The collection will resemble one of those sad museums stuffed with a gallimaufry of objects assembled by old-fashioned archaeologists who kept no record of the provenance or circumstances of their finds. Without literary evidence or detailed descriptions relating to different periods it is an extremely difficult task to work out the stratigraphy of a mass of lexical material. But the effort is very well worth making and no doubt, as the materials increase, improved techniques will be developed to assist the study and analysis of them.

This paper reports a very modest venture in the process of sorting the vocabularies of some of the languages of Sierra Leone. The Portuguese contribution to these languages is admittedly minute but the attempt to filter it out seems justified by two special considerations: first is the fact that Portuguese has long been a dead language in the area of investigation and therefore the loan-words are genuine survivors, endenizened in the languages which have borrowed them; secondly, in this case at least we have a considerable amount of documentary evidence concerning the circumstances in which the borrowing took place.

The stupendous nautical achievements of the Portuguese have unduly overshadowed their important successes in establishing human contacts and developing trade. Wherever they sailed they endeavoured to discover not only the currents and winds of the ocean and the outline of the coast but also what manner of men inhabited the lands they visited, how they lived, what objects they had to offer for trade, and what they desired in return. There is much to be said for the view that regards a successful trade negotiation as a more progressive and genuinely human achievement than a victory in battle or an expansion of territory won by conquest; conquerors and destroyers the Portuguese did not aim to be in West Africa and in this they were superior to the Spaniards who ravaged the civilizations of Mexico and Peru and to the more bellicose among the settlers of North America. Butchery and pillage can be accomplished without recourse to speech but trade, unless it is on the level of silent barter, requires question and answer, discussion and argument.

The problem of surmounting language barriers can be solved in two ways: either the traveller learns the language of the people he visits or they must be persuaded to learn the language of the stranger. The former method was employed, for example, in Brazil by Álvares Cabrai in 1500. Certain persons would be detailed to remain among the local inhabitants and learn their tongue and customs in the interval before the next ship called. These interpreters and missionaries—for they were naturally expected to communicate the Christian faith—had, for obvious and melancholy reasons, to be expendable; they were in fact exiles or criminals whose punishment it was to be anthropologists and evangelists against their will. Such people could hardly be expected to show much enthusiasm for their work, even if they succeeded in persuading their hosts that they were more valuable as pets than as protein. In West Africa, however, this method does not seem to have been much favoured; while it is true that, as trade developed along the coast, many of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Editorial
• Vestiges of Portuguese in the Languages of Sierra Leone
• Susu studies and literature: 1799-1900
• The Function of the Song in Mende Folktales
• Julius Caesar in Krio
• Sierra Leone Items in the Gullah Dialect of American English
• Phonemic Interpretation Problems in Some West African Languages.1
• The Dia-Phonemic Principle in Field Work1
• Emotional Bias in the Translation and Presentation of African Oral Art
• Studies Devoted to S. W. Koelle's Polyglotta Africana Yoroba Dialects in the Polyglotta Africana
• Fula Dialects in the Polyglotta Africana
• Nigerian Cross River Languages in the Polyglotta Africana: Part II
• Mel Languages in the Polyglotta Africana Part I: Baga, Landuma and Temne