A unified language for Africa????

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...

Hey, Beth Nguyen, was it America that ruined your name, or was it the English language?

I just read a New Yorker article by Beth Nguyen called America Ruined my Name for Me. It seems her name is Bich Minh Nguyen. You can guess what Anglophones do with that. Or as Beth says:

I cannot detach the name Bich from people laughing at me, calling me a bitch, letting me know that I’m the punch line of my own joke.

Of course, like everyone else, the answer for why this happens is simple: racism!

I would suggest another reason: Linguistic.

"Bich" you see means "Jade" in Vietnamese and is pronounced "Bic". She could have changed it to "Vic"or "Vicki" since as she points out Asian children often have second names, which is helpful if your name is "Phuc" or "Phouc".

On the other hand, you can guess that Anglophones pronounce "Bich" as "Bitch" which Ms. Nguyen attributes not to linguistic differences, but to the fact that people in the US are anti-Asian. One the other hand, I would be pretty certain if she had landed in Australia or New Zealand, or any other anglophone nation, that the same problem would have occurred.

Maybe not so much in Canada, and definitely not in France. She probably wouldn't have written this article had her family emigrated to a Francophone nation, which was a definite option for them. That's because "Bich" would be associated with a different animal than what it is in English.

"Biche" in French means "doe": a sweet and gentile animal. Alas, Beth is the only "Bich" I have ever met. So, I really can't get into this. And for all I know she may have gone to France. Anyway, she should be happy she wasn't named "Phuc" or "Phouc" since that one is pretty universal.

On the other and, I can understand a desire to fit in which "Bich" doesn't in an anglophone country, but on the whole I'm not sure if that rises to the level of racism. After all, her family came to the United States and didn't try to move on to Quebec or France. France would have been another option since Indochina was once a French Colony. And obviously, the "racism" wasn't bad enough that the family decided to move back to Viet Nam. They remained in the US.

Anyway, Beth admits she has always given fake names in restaurants, which has moved on to writing the article I am responding to with the name "Beth Nguyen". So maybe the "racism" isn't that vicious that it can't be escaped from. I'm pretty sure her Western friends didn't mind if she was "Bich", "Beth", or whatever. 

Since I am bilingual, I see "Bich" and think of "Biche", a doe, a sweet animal. My pronunciation of her name would probably also be wrong since it would be more in line with the French. That's my problem with her article. It's dangerous to make blanket statements about people.

Prior to Brexit, I identified as British, but post-Brexit I am European. While I can pretty much pick and choose amongst a few of the European nationalities, it is the Frencophone nations which I identify with most these days. That means both my US and French "homelands" have been at war with Vietnam. France was probably the worst.

But, I didn't see "Bitch" when I read your name "Beth": I saw "Biche". That would have been the way I pronounced it.