Posts

Showing posts from September, 2017

Resources to Learn Bassa

Image
Bassa has an indigenous script, It was first popularized by Dr. Thomas Flo Lewis , who has instigated publishing of limited materials in the language from the mid-1900s through the 1930s, with its height in the 1910s and 1920s. Bassa (also spelled Basaa, Basa, Bissa), or Mbene , is a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon by the Basaa people. Its name in Bassa is Vah , which means 'to throw a sign' . It is spoken by about 300,000 people in Centre and Littoral regions . The origins of the Bassa alphabet are obscure.The alphabet fell out of use in Liberia during the 19th century. Originally the Bassa alphabet was written on slates with charcoal, and the writing could be easily erased with a leaf known as yan. Bassa in a tonal language. Tones are marked using a system of dots and dashes which appear inside the vowel letters. As I don’t have the keyboard of this language, I can’t show you by typing. But I am showing you through a picture of this language.Basaa co...

Resources to Learn Bambara

Image
Aw ni tile African indigenous languages are mostly same as to write and to pronounce. Like the other languages one of the renowned language is Bambara, also known as Bamana language.  Bambara is a Mande language, spoken principally among the Bambara ethnic group in Mali. Though it is the national language of Mali but it is also used in Senega l, Gambia , Sierra Leone and Ghana . East, North and south Bamanako regions are considered to be historical geographical origin of Bambara where Segou-  a town and an urban commune in south central mali that was the capital of Bambara  empire was set. As far I know, about 15 million people speaks in Bambara. Having a rich oral literature, writing was first introduced to the Bambara during French occupation. Along with some Arabic and N’ko alphabets, Bambara is usually written with the Latin alphabets. Surprisingly, 80 percent people of Mali speaks through it. It has seven vowels. Three of them are like ‘a’ ‘e’...

Resources to Learn Zulu

Image
Zulu language is mainly spoken by one of  the African tribal group of people known as Zulu . Like most indigenous Southern African languages, Zulu was not a written language until contact with missionaries from Europe, who documented the language using the Latin script. Standard Zulu as it is taught in schools, also called " deep Zulu " ( isiZulu esijulile ), differs in various respects from the language spoken by people living in cities. Zulu, is one of the 11 official languages of the Republic of South Africa. It’s also spoken in Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland. According to Ethnologue, it’s the second most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Shona . Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet .  Even in English, the language is often referred to by using its native form, isiZulu . There are 10 million speakers of Zulu who live in South Africa. Men wear the amabeshu , an apron made of the skin of goat or ...