African Languages

The Ezana Stone: Decoding Ethiopia’s Rosetta Stone

Long before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the Kingdom of Aksum produced the Ezana Stone, a trilingual monument inscribed…

5 days ago

Inside Kannywood: The Engine of a West African Lingua Franca

Explore how the vibrant film industry of Kano, known as Kannywood, serves as the primary engine for standardizing and spreading…

5 days ago

King Njoya’s Dream: The Bamum Script Revolution

Discover the remarkable true story of King Ibrahim Njoya of Cameroon, who invented a writing system from scratch in the…

6 days ago

Speaking Pharaonic: Coptic as the Final Stage of Egyptian

Coptic is often mistaken for a dead language, but it serves as the final, living link to the Ancient Egyptian…

6 days ago

The Doctor Who Invented a Writing System

Discover the forgotten story of Dr. J. W. P. Davis, a Liberian doctor who invented a unique writing system for…

2 months ago

The Novel That Made Pidgin Literature

When Amos Tutuola published *The Palm-Wine Drinkard* in 1952, its "broken" English was celebrated abroad but scorned as a national…

2 months ago

Tone Spreading in African Languages

Ever wonder how a single word can have multiple meanings based only on its melody? This post explores "tone spreading",…

2 months ago

The Wolof Pronoun System

In many languages, pronouns are simple stand-ins like 'I' or 'they'. But in Wolof, a major language of West Africa,…

3 months ago

The African Tongue with Asian Roots

Journey to the great island of Madagascar, a biodiversity hotspot floating off the coast of Mozambique. You might assume its…

6 months ago

From Pidgin to Power: Nigeria’s Voice

Often dismissed as "broken English", Nigerian Pidgin is in fact a dynamic creole language spoken by over 75 million people.…

6 months ago

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