language endangerment in Africa

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the process by which African languages lose speakers across generations and become vulnerable to extinction, driven by urbanisation, the dominance of European colonial languages in formal education and government, the prestige of national lingua francas, and economic incentives favouring multilingualism in widely spoken languages over maintenance of small community languages; Africa contains approximately 2,000 languages — roughly a third of the world's total — and UNESCO estimates that several hundred face serious endangerment; the loss of a language represents the extinction of unique ecological knowledge, oral literary traditions, and cognitive frameworks; language documentation efforts by African linguists and international organisations seek to create audio, video, and written archives before the last fluent speakers pass on