Making Africa Legible
European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colo...
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International Institute of Islamic Thought
2016
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oai:doaj.org-article:d8e061e96a4b443db1045d8fd3902a772021-12-02T17:26:27ZMaking Africa Legible10.35632/ajis.v33i3.3502690-37332690-3741https://doaj.org/article/d8e061e96a4b443db1045d8fd3902a772016-07-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/350https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3733https://doaj.org/toc/2690-3741 European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colonial public schools. Using early missionary grammars promoting the “conversion of Africa from the East,” British colonial standardization policies and educational reforms, as well as petitions and newspaper editorials by the local Swahilispeaking community, I trace the story of the Romanization of Swahili in Zanzibar, the site chosen as the standard Swahili dialect. While the Romanization of African languages such as Swahili was part of a project of making Africa legible to Europeans during the colonial era, the resulting generation gap as children and parents read different letters made Africa more illegible to Africans themselves. Caitlyn BoltonInternational Institute of Islamic ThoughtarticleIslamBP1-253ENAmerican Journal of Islam and Society, Vol 33, Iss 3 (2016) |
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DOAJ |
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DOAJ |
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EN |
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Islam BP1-253 |
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Islam BP1-253 Caitlyn Bolton Making Africa Legible |
| description |
European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colonial public schools. Using early missionary grammars promoting the “conversion of Africa from the East,” British colonial standardization policies and educational reforms, as well as petitions and newspaper editorials by the local Swahilispeaking community, I trace the story of the Romanization of Swahili in Zanzibar, the site chosen as the standard Swahili dialect. While the Romanization of African languages such as Swahili was part of a project of making Africa legible to Europeans during the colonial era, the resulting generation gap as children and parents read different letters made Africa more illegible to Africans themselves.
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| format |
article |
| author |
Caitlyn Bolton |
| author_facet |
Caitlyn Bolton |
| author_sort |
Caitlyn Bolton |
| title |
Making Africa Legible |
| title_short |
Making Africa Legible |
| title_full |
Making Africa Legible |
| title_fullStr |
Making Africa Legible |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Making Africa Legible |
| title_sort |
making africa legible |
| publisher |
International Institute of Islamic Thought |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://doaj.org/article/d8e061e96a4b443db1045d8fd3902a77 |
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