African English

Africa is the most multilingual area in the world, if people are measured against languages. Upon a large number of indigenous languages rests a slowly changing superstructure of world languages (Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese). The problems of language are everywhere linked with political, social, economic, and educational factors.The Republic of South Africa, the oldest British settlement in the continent, resembles Canada in having two recognized European languages within its borders: English and Afrikaans, or Cape Dutch. Both British and Dutch traders followed in the wake of 15th-century Portuguese explorers and have lived in widely varying war-and-peace relationships ever since. Although the Union of South Africa, comprising Cape Province, Transvaal, Natal, and Orange Free State, was for more than a half century (1910-61) a member of the British Empire and Commonwealth, its four prime ministers (Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, and Malan) were all Dutchmen. In the early 1980s Afrikaners outnumbered Britishers by three to two. The Afrikaans language began to diverge seriously from European Dutch in the late 18th century and has gradually come to be recognized as a separate language. Although the English spoken in South Africa differs in some respects from standard British English, its speakers do not regard the language as a separate one. They have naturally come to use many Afrikanerisms, such as kloof, kopje, krans, veld, and vlei, to denote features of the landscape and occasionally employ African names to designate local animals and plants. The words trek and commando, notorious in South African history, have acquired almost worldwide currency.Elsewhere in Africa, English helps to answer the needs of wider communication. It functions as an official language of administration in Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland and in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya. It is the language of instruction at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; at the University of Nairobi, Kenya; and at the University of Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania.The West African states of The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, independent members of the Commonwealth, have English as their official language. They are all multilingual. The official language of Liberia is also English, although its tribal communities constitute four different linguistic groups. Its leading citizens regard themselves as Americo-Liberians, being descendants of those freed blacks whose first contingents arrived in West Africa in 1822. South of the Sahara indigenous languages are extending their domains and are competing healthily and vigorously with French and English._

LECTURE 9LEXICOGRAPHY1. Some basic notions of English Lexicography. 2. Historical development of British and American Lexicography.3. Classification of dictionaries 1. Some basic notions of English Lexicography.

The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography.

Lexicography is closely connected with Lexicology, both dealing with the same problems — the form, meaning, usage and origin of vocabulary units — and making use of each other's achievements.

On the one hand, the enormous raw material collected in dic­tionaries is widely used by linguists in their research. On the other hand, the principles of dictionary making are always based on linguistic fundamentals, and each individual entry is made up in accordance with the current knowledge and findings of scholars in various fields of language study. The compiler's approach to various lexicological problems (such as homonymy, phraseological units. etc.) always finds reflection in selection and arrangement of the material.

The word “dictionary” comes from medieval Latin “dictonarim”, which came from Latin “dictio” – “ word “ or “say”. Ancient Greeks and Romans were the first to produce these works but most Greek and Latin dictionaries were either lists if rare and difficult words or specialized lists of words. 2. Historical development of British and American Lexicography. English lexicography The first unilingual dictionary explaining difficult words appeared in 1604, the author was Robert Cawdry, a schoolmaster. He compiled his dictionary for schoolchildren. In 1721 an English scientist and writer Nathan Bailey published the first etymological dictionary which explained the origin of English words. It was the first scientific dictionary, it was compiled for philologists.In 1775 an English scientist compiled a famous explanatory dictionary. Its author was Samuel Johnson. Every word in his dictionary was illustrated by examples from English literature, the meanings of words were clear from the contexts in which they were used. The dictionary was a great success and it influenced the development of lexicography in all countries. In 1858 one of the members of the English philological society Dr. Trench raised the question of compiling a dictionary including all the words existing in the language. The philological society adopted the decision to compile the dictionary and the work started. More than a thousand people took part in collecting examples, and 26 years later in 1884 the first volume was published. It contained words beginning with «A» and «B». The last volume was published in 1928 that is 70 years after the decision to compile it was adopted. The dictionary was called NED and contained 12 volumes.In 1933 the dictionary was republished under the title «The Oxford English Dictionary», because the work on the dictionary was conducted in Oxford. This dictionary contained 13 volumes. As the dictionary was very large and terribly expensive scientists continued their work and compiled shorter editions of the dictionary: «A Shorter Oxford Dictionary» consisting of two volumes. It had the same number of entries, but far less examples from literature. They also compiled «A Concise Oxford Dictionary» consisting of one volume and including only modern words and no examples from literature. The American lexicography began to develop much later, at the end of the 18-th century. The most famous American English dictionary was compiled by Noah Webster. He was an active statesman and public man and he published his first dictionary in 1806. He went on with his work on the dictionary and in 1828 he published a two-volume dictionary. He tried to simplify the English spelling and transcription. He introduced the alphabetical system of transcription where he used letters and combinations of letters instead of transcription signs. He denoted vowels in closed syllables by the corresponding vowels, e.g. / a/, /e/, / i/, / o/, /u/. He denoted vowels in the open syllable by the same letters, but with a dash above them,e.g. / a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/. He denoted vowels in the position before /r/ as the same letters with two dots above them, e.g. / a/, /o/ and by the l etter «e» with two dots above it for the combinations «er», «ir», «ur» because they are pronounced identically. The same tendency is preserved for other sounds: /u:/ is denoted by /oo/, /y/ is used for the sound /j/ etc. 3. Classification of dictionaries All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopaedic dictionaries. Encyclopaedic dictionaries describe different objects, phenomena, people and give some data about them. Linguistic dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure, their origin, their usage. Words are usually given in the alphabetical order.Linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and specialized. To general dictionaries two most widely used dictionaries belong: explanatory and translation dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, collocations, word-frequency, neologisms, slang, pronouncing, etymological, phraseological and others. All types of dictionaries can be unilingual if the explanation is given in the same language, bilingual if the explanation is given in another language and also they can be polylingual. In explanatory dictionaries the entry consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings, examples, phraseology. Translation dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language. There are English-Russian dictionaries by I.R. Galperin, by Y.Apresyan and others. Among general dictionaries we can also mention Learner’s dictionaries. They began to appear in the second half of the 20-th century. The most famous is «The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary» by A.S. Hornby. It is a unilingual dictionary for advanced foreign learners and language teachers. It gives data about grammatical and lexical valency of words. Specialized dictionaries of synonyms are also widely used, one of them is «Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms». These are unilingual dictionaries. The best known bilingual dictionary of synonyms is «English Synonyms» compiled by Y. Apresyan.In 1981 «The Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English» was compiled, where words are given in 14 semantic groups of everyday nature. Each word is defined in detail, its usage is explained and illustrated, synonyms, antonyms are presented also. Phraseological dictionaries describe idioms and colloquial phrases, proverbs. Some of them have examples from literature. Some lexicographers include not only word-groups but also anomalies among words. In «The Oxford Dicionary of English Proverbs» each proverb is illustrated by a lot of examples, there are stylistic references as well. The most famous bilingual dictionary of phraseology was compiled by A.V. Kunin. It is one of the best phraseological dictionaries.Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms of these words and forms of these words in other languages. One of the best etymological dictionaries was compiled by W. Skeat. Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation. The most famous is D. Jones’ s «Pronouncing Dictionary».Dictionaries of neologisms are: a four-volume «Supplement to NED» by Burchfield, «The Longman Register of New Words»/1990/, «Bloomsury Dictionary of New Words» /1996/.