This is a furtheration of my thoughts on this topic. Yeah, there is an irony that someone who quotes Julius Nyerere would critique the use of Swahili as a lingua franca for a continent, but...
As a person who speaks both English and French, I'm always happiest when the conversation is held in English. Not to mention being in a meeting with a group of people, who included the head of Benelux, who just happened to suggest that we speak English since it was easiest. But, that makes sense from someone who speaks Dutch, a language which is really close to English.
Actually, Frisian is supposed to be closer to English. One rhyme which purports to demonstrate. the palpable similarity between Frisian and English: "Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Frisian," which is pronounced more or less the same in both languages (West Frisian: "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.").
I've heard in a few places that the medieval Frisian folk hero Grutte Pier asked people to pronounce this sentence. He fought against the Dutch and Saxons. Only real Frisians can pronounce the sentence correctly, so enemies posing as Frisians were bound to slip up and get caught. Grutte Pier’s gigantic sword is still on display at the Fries Museum. I think that Dutch/Flemish is basically a shibboleth: especially after one of my friends said I did my phone message in German twice...
Anyway, I come at this from a European viewpoint, where people happily kill each other over which alphabet they use along with how they pronounce things.
Africa is probably worse, although one could blame the Rwandan genocide on the evil Belgians. Hey, I was just a kid when Grégoire Kaybinda established the independent republic, but didn't that follow a genocide of Tutsi by the Hutus? As I've pointed out in a previous post:
The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each population generally having its own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan population.
There are a few reasons for writing this. One being that Pascal Paradou is interviewing a lot of African Francophones on Radio France Internationale lately in preparation for the Francophone summit (https://www.rfi.fr/fr/direct-monde). French would be second choice for me, but I do have to admit I love listening to Africans speaking French. Not that my vote would be for French as the lingua franca, but it would be a second choice.
It would be a definite hands down over Swahili.
The interesting thing is that the Swahili article comes from the BBC, which was one of Tanzania's colonial rulers (the other being Germany). The Brits were actually latecomers, taking over the territory after the 14-18 War. Of course, the French are going to promote Francophonie since that is one of their foreign policy goals.
Yes, I am a member of the Alliance Françiase...
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