BY MULUGETA GUDETA
At the recently concluded 36th ordinary session of the African Union (AU), there were calls by prominent African scholars asking for Amharic, the Ethiopian national language to become also one of the working languages of AU. The suggestion was first made a few years back but had not been pursued vigorously for many reasons. As we all know, Ethiopia has played a key role in the founding of the OAU and later the AU. The headquarters of the organization are established here in Addis Ababa and continue to host major diplomatic events. Ethiopia has been fighting against attempts to shift the location of the OAU and later on that of the AU elsewhere in the continent. But this cannot be the main reason for making Amharic the working language of the AU at this particular time. Amharic deserves to become the first working language of the AU, for, among other things, its specific history, achievements and present status within and outside the country.
The reasons why the African Union adopted English, French and Arabic as working language of the organization is quite evident. English is spoken in Anglophone Africa which embraces Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Anglophone means, “consisting of or belonging to an English-speaking population, especially in a country where two or more languages are spoken.” According to Collins English Dictionary, “Anglophones are people whose native language is English or who speak English because they live in a country where English is one of the official languages.”
Those that are officially considered English-speaking countries in Africa are South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Tunisia, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. The top English speaking African countries are defined as being, “countries where populations embrace English for common communication in business, government, tourism, diplomacy, and education.”
English became one of the widely spoken languages in Africa due to historical facts; mainly because of many countries were colonized by the British for centuries. In the 20th century, America’s influence throughout the world grew by leaps and bounds thereby extending or consolidating the influence of English as an international lingua franca. According to Business Insider web portal, some 130 million people in Africa speak English out of more than 1 billion people while the proficiency levels of spoken English vary from one country to other and from region to region within the continent.
By the same token, Francophone Africa consists of countries that speak French as their official language. According to Wikipedia, “Africa is home to the largest number of French speakers in the world. There are 120 million people who speak French in 24 African countries.” Among French speaking African countries are Morocco, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Cameroon. These African countries are called Francophone because to designate the population that speaks French. “The term designates the ensemble of people organizations and governments that share the use of French on a daily basis and as administrative language, teaching language or chosen language.”
The same sources indicate that Africa has most French speakers of any continent. The French language was introduced in the African continent because of colonialism. France and Belgium lost control of their African colonies in 1950s and 1960s. However, French is still spoken in at least 29 African countries.
The number of local languages spoken in Africa is estimated to reach more than 2000. “With anywhere between 1000 and 2000 languages, Africa is home to approximately one-third of the world’s languages. The diversity of Africa’s languages is evidenced by their populations. In total, there are at least 75 languages in Africa that have more than one million speakers.”
The African language that occupies first place by the number of speakers in Africa is Swahili. Swahili is spoken by about 150 million people in Central and Southern Africa in the Great Lakes region. Amharic has obviously fewer speakers than Swahili. However, the genesis and development of Amharic as a language of literature and the arts as well as music and as a vehicle of traditional knowledge, culture and philosophy is an established fact.
Amharic “an Ethiopia Semitic language, which is a subgroup within the Semitic branch of the Afro-asiatic languages. It is spoken as the first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other populations residing in major cities and towns of Ethiopia.”
Currently, Amharic serves as the official working language of the Ethiopian federal government, and is also the official or working language several Ethiopia’s federal regions. According to one source, “Amharic has over 32, 400,000 mother tongue speakers and 25, 100, 000 second language speakers making the total number of speakers over 57, 500, 000. Amharic is the most widely spoken mother tongue in Ethiopia after Oromiffa.”
Amharic is also the second largest Semitic language in the world after Arabic. It is also the only Ethiopian language that has its own alphabet and script that is derived from the ancient language known as Ge’ez.
Since ancient times, Amharic has also served as the official working language of Ethiopia, language of the courts, the language of trade and everyday communications and of the military since the late 12th century. It is a language that has most contributed to the development of Ethiopian literature. “The oldest surviving examples of written Amharic date back to the reigns of the 14th century Emperor of Ethiopia AmdeTsion and his successors, who commissioned a number of poems known as “soldier Songs, glorifying them and their troops. There is a growing body of literature in Amharic in many genres. This literature includes government proclamations, and records, educational books, religious materials, novels, poetry, proverb collections dictionaries technical manuals medical topics, etc.”
Although the African Union (AU) has adopted English, French and Arabic as its official working languages, it has not so far adopted an African language as its working language. However, there are obvious candidates that could serve as an African working language at the AU, namely Swahili and Amharic, to name but the two most prominent ones. Swahili is spoken by more than 150 million people worldwide while Amharic follows second with more than 80 million speakers worldwide.
There are many reasons why Amharic should and can serve as one of the working languages of the AU. One of them is the number of people who speak the language worldwide, “More recent sources state the number of first-language speakers in 2018 as nearly 32 million, with another 25 million second-language speakers in Ethiopia. Additionally 3 million emigrants outside of Ethiopia speak the language.
Most of the Ethiopian Jewish communities in Ethiopia and Israel speak Amharic. In Washington DC, Amharic became one of the six non-English languages in the Language Access Act of 2004, which allows government services and education in Amharic. Furthermore, Amharic is considered a holy language by the Rasteferi religion and widely used by its followers worldwide.”
Within Ethiopia, Amharic is the official working language of the federal and regional governments. However there are also other languages contesting this status or calling for use of additional languages as official languages, Oromiffa, Tigrigna and Somali, among others. This issue is hotly contested and the federal government is trying to accommodate the people’s demands for linguistic equality at the regional level or multiple representations at the federal level.
Under the language-based ethnic federalism political system now in place in Ethiopia, this issue may not come as a surprise because it has always been on top of the political discourse among the various ethnic groups and their representatives. While this matter is bound to be resolved sooner or later, the suggestion that Amharic should serve as one of the four working languages of the AU is a relatively new agenda. It is nevertheless enjoying strong support from other African countries and scholars, some of whom are calling on people in Africa to learn to speak it.
This idea has found a particularly strong support among delegates and guests at the recently concluded 36th ordinary session of the AU. It is however going to take a long time before the modalities of its adoption as an official working language of the AU would be agreed upon and final decision would be adopted. Anyway, these and other related issues need to be discussed or debated, sorted out and recommended by language experts and scholars after long and systematic discourses. Politicians may have a role to play in the process and final decision. However this is a matter to be settled primarily by African linguists and experts who no doubt have a more complete knowledge of the role of languages in international institutions and how Amharic would be accommodated in future arrangements.
The Ethiopian Herald 5 March 2023
