Tag Archives: Language
Digitized field recordings of Lorenzo Dow Turner
This newly available digital resource includes 40 hours of audio field recordings by the African American academic and linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner, the “Father of Gullah Studies,” relating to: African American History / Studies, Black History / Studies, Languages, Linguistics, Music and Music History. The recordings were made 1932-1952, relating to Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil and […]
East Africa’s first ‘newspaper’
It has come to my attention that Msimulizi, a newspaper published from 1888 in Zanzibar (Tanzania), has been digitized and is now available in full text online. The catalog record from SOAS, University of London, includes the following contextual information: For historic context see: Sturmer, Martin. The Media history of Tanzania. (Ndanda, Tanzania : Ndanda […]
George Fortune manuscripts open for research
I’m delighted to announce that the George Fortune Papers, 1869-2006 (2013 accretion with significant updates to the original finding aid) now are open for research. A small selection of items from the collection are available online. This has been a fascinating collection to work with and has the potential to support a variety of research projects. I’m personally charmed by the […]
Arabic script paleography symposium
The Islamic Manuscript Association, in collaboration with the Department of Classics at King’s College London and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, is pleased to announce a symposium on the palaeography of Arabic-script languages at King’s College London’s Great Hall on the Strand, London, on Monday, 24 August. Compared with the well-established Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Coptic palaeographic […]
African languages in the US Census
Reblogging from discussion posted July 4, 2015 by Don Osborn on the H-Africa network: A feature article in Slate last May (note 1) used US census data in creating a map of the most commonly spoken African languages by state. Of the five languages and language cagegories that were shown on the map, two were obvious (Amharic and […]
African Flagship Languages Initiative (AFLI) 2015
African Flagship Languages Initiative (AFLI) 2015: Domestic Intensive Summer Program: June 10 – July 31, 2015 The 2015 African Flagship Languages Initiative (AFLI) Domestic Intensive Summer Program is hosted by the Center for African Studies and the Department of Languages, Literatures, & Culture, University of Florida, on behalf of the Institute of International Education (IIE). […]
First African language articles published in mainstream journal
The first two papers to be published by a mainstream journal in an African language are now freely available online! They are in the current issue of Journal of African Cultural Studies: ‘Rũrĩmĩ na karamu: ithoga harĩ athamaki a Abirika‘, written and published in Gĩkũyũ. English language translation: ‘Tongue and pen: a challenge to philosophers […]
Africa’s Sources of Knowledge in Ajami Scripts
In this video of a lecture given on March 21, 2013 at Dickinson College, Fallou Ngom, Associate Professor and Director of the African Language Program at Boston University, addresses the myth of illiteracy in Islamized areas of Africa. It highlights important sources of African knowledge written in the modified classical Arabic script known as Ajami. The event […]
George Fortune obituary
George Glynn Fortune, aged 97 years, passed away on the morning of October 17th in his sleep at a residential care facility in Mold, Flintshire, North Wales. He was preceded in death by his wife Denise Helene on August 18, 2012 just short of their 45th wedding anniversary. Born on July 31, 1915 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe […]
Penn and Google preserve endangered languages
Penn and Google preserve endangered languages By Jenny Trang · July 11, 2012 “With about half of the world’s 7,000 languages threatened with extinction by the year 2100, Penn Libraries is collaborating with Google and other organizations to preserve them in the Endangered Languages Project.” The Daily Pennsylvanian is the University of Pennsylvania‘s independent student […]
African Studies library 