Africa, South and Southeast Asia

Introduction: varieties of English in Africa and South and Southeast Asia

Historical spread and geographical coverage

The presence of English (and other European languages) in Africa and South and Southeast Asia (henceforth Africa-Asia) is due to several historical events: sporadic and subsequently sustained trade, the introduction of Christianity, slavery, formal British colonization, and influence from the U.S. (in places like Liberia and the Philippines). Furthermore, after colonization independent “new nations” were faced with few options but to adopt English as a working language of government, administration and higher education. These contacts have seen the development of several types of English:

ENL (English as a Native language), spoken by British settlers and/or their descendants, as in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Hong Kong etc. (The variety may be adopted by other groups within a territory as well).

ESL (English as a Second Language), spoken in territories like India and Nigeria, where access to English was sufficient to produce a stable second language (L2) used in formal domains like education and government. The ESL is also used for internal communication within the territory, especially as a lingua franca amongst educated speakers who do not share the same mother tongue.

Pidgin English, a variety which arises outside of the educational system and is only partly derived from English, especially in its lexicon; though structurally it cannot really be considered an ‘adoption’ of English syntax. An example would be Pidgin English in Cameroon. A pidgin shows equally significant influence from both local languages and common or ‘universal’ processes of simplification and creation of grammatical structure. Some pidgins may turn into a creole (spoken as a first language). In Africa and Asia this is not common, since speakers frequently retain their home and community languages. Some scholars are of the opinion that West African varieties of pidgin have expanded into a creole without necessarily becoming a first language.

These three types are described in the Africa-Asia. A fourth type EFL (English as a Foreign Language) is not considered, since it arises typically for international communication amongst a few bilingual people competent in English in a territory that had not come under the direct influence of British settlement and colonial administration. In such a situation English is learnt in the education system as a “foreign language”, but is not used as a medium of instruction. This is truer of some territories than others: China is clearly an EFL country; Eritrea less so, in terms of the greater use of English by fluent bilinguals in the domain of education.

British “Protectorates” like Lesotho and Egypt, which were subject to British influence without being formally colonized, also form an intermediate category somewhere between ESL and EFL. It would not be surprising if the current era of globalization established English more firmly in EFL territories, producing more focused varieties which could one day be studied in terms of the concepts and categories emphasized in ESL studies.

Finally, there are what I term “language shift Englishes” – varieties which started as ESLs, but which stabilize as an L1. They then develop casual registers often absent from ESLs (since a local language fulfils ‘vernacular’ functions). However, they retain a great many L2 features as well. Amongst the varieties of note here are Indian South African English and, elsewhere, Irish English.

Africa-Asia is distinguishable from the remaining regions by the preponderance of ESL varieties, rather than the L1 English which dominates in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In other words, indigenous African and Asian languages have survived the impact of colonization better than their counterparts elsewhere.

Though English is seen as an important resource for international communication as well as for internal “High” functions (in formal domains like education and government), its hegemony in Africa-Asia is not complete. There are other languages of high status which may function as regional lingua francas, for example Swahili in East Africa, Hindi in North India and Malay in Singapore and Malaysia.

At the lower end of the social and educational spectrum it is noteworthy that Pidgin English is spreading rapidly in West Africa. According to Faraclas, Nigerian Pidgin is now the most widely spoken language in Nigeria, with well over half the population being able to converse in it.

Africa’s contacts with English pre-date those of the U.S. and the Caribbean. The earliest contacts were in the 1530s (Spencer 1971: 8), making early Modern English, with accents slightly older than Shakespeare’s, the initial (if sporadic) input. In Asia the initial contacts with English go back to 1600 when Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the merchants of London who formed the East India Company.

The full force of English in Africa-Asia was not felt until formal colonization in the nineteenth century (for example Singapore in 1819, India in 1858, Nigeria 1884, Kenya 1886). A representative selection of the varieties spoken in these territories. The geographical coverage is that of West Africa, East Africa, South Africa, South Asia and South-east Asia. In addition we have taken on board the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, whose nearest mainland port is Cape Town.