sunil@ut-ngp.UTEXAS (Sunil Trivedi) (06/23/85)
While almost all of the slaves who were brought to the
'New World' came from West Africa, why is Swahili given
such a high stature by Blacks in the U.S. when Swahili
is from East Africa? Why not a West African language,
like Yoruba? Since the Europeans stripped the African
slave of his own language and culture (or at least the
Europeans thought they did), did the 'white man' have any-
thing to do with Swahili becoming the 'native language'
to the Blacks in the U.S.? Even the Arabs, who also had an
extremely active African slave trade, did many of the same
things that the Europeans did to the African slaves. While
the Euopean 'gave' the Bible, the Arab 'gave' the Koran [Quran].
Why has Swahili been chosen since it is too a language of
the slavemasters?
Sunil Trivedi
sunil@ut-ngp.ARPA
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suniltonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) (06/25/85)
In article <1867@ut-ngp.UTEXAS>, sunil@ut-ngp.UTEXAS (Sunil Trivedi) writes: > > While almost all of the slaves who were brought to the > 'New World' came from West Africa, why is Swahili given > such a high stature by Blacks in the U.S. when Swahili > is from East Africa? Most of the internationalist (n > 1) generation Africans I know don't distinguish between East or West Africa in their sense of African heritage. That is, they are African more than they are East or West African. Why Swahili? I'm not sure, but perhaps because at the time of rising identification with Africa, Swahili was being pushed as a continental black African language, a tongue for commerce, diplomacy and culture between black African nations. There would be more point in picking a language to be close to modern African political developments than to choose an arbitrary tribal language out of historical nostalgia. Of course, most of these choices were made before the rise of Nigeria to its current prestige and economic power. As to "white" influence on this decision, my impression from the history books I've read is that African nationalist movements in the US have always been led and supported by Blacks alone. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw