The countries of north western Africa that I am including in this portion of the analysis are: Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D'Vivoire, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Mali, and Nigeria. The actual country lines and borders don't seem to mean much as far as languages travel but for the purpose of organization I listed them anyway. As far as the official spoken languages in the area it is split between the classifications Afro Asiatic and Niger Congo A, with a slight grouping of Nilo Saharan in the country of Mali.
The countries I am classifying as Northwestern Africa.
Okay now to explain that in a way that actually makes sense. The Afro Asiatic language family is one of the world's largest language families and consists of about 375 current languages. The most common languages in this family are Arabic, variations of the Berber language, Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia), and Hausa. Arabic is the primary language in Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mauritania. The language is also spread along northern Africa but Mauritania is as far southwest as it officially travels. The Berber languages are the indigenous dialects of the continent and have many branches. In Mali the dialect Taureg is spoken for example.
These few countries and the languages they speak are not surprising to me, but when I focused on Senegal and found its official language to be French I was caught a little more off guard. French is the language used by the administration and has the title of "official" but when it comes to usage only 15-20 percent of males understand it and only 1-2 percent of women. Instead the most commonly used language is Wolof. This shows that the colonization of this country long ago still has a governmental impact even though the culture and people are not the same. Ghana and Nigeria also show this impact of past colonization. Both countries official languages are English, though the population outside of officials does not speak this language nor understand it very well.
(ABOVE): Nigeria is just one example of an ex-colony
that may have a colonial "official" language but in
reality consists of many different dialects and
languages.
Source:
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/willow/geography-of-mauritania0.gif
These few countries and the languages they speak are not surprising to me, but when I focused on Senegal and found its official language to be French I was caught a little more off guard. French is the language used by the administration and has the title of "official" but when it comes to usage only 15-20 percent of males understand it and only 1-2 percent of women. Instead the most commonly used language is Wolof. This shows that the colonization of this country long ago still has a governmental impact even though the culture and people are not the same. Ghana and Nigeria also show this impact of past colonization. Both countries official languages are English, though the population outside of officials does not speak this language nor understand it very well.
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