subject: English and Multilingualism in Post-Colonial Spaces [print this page] As a result of earlier Western colonial expansion and the colonial powers' imposition of borders which often respected neither cultural nor linguistic realities, post-colonial nation states particularly in Africa - have highly heterogeneous populations. Often, these nations have established a multilingual language policy, which promotes several languages as national or official languages or as media of instruction, to accommodate linguistic diversity. Kenya, for example, has chosen to use Kiswahili as the country's national Frank Muller Replica Watches language, and English serves as the official language of administration, law, and higher education. Part of the population commands both Kiswahili and English, albeit often at different levels of competence. For others, multilingual-ism in Kenya may involve several local languages, for example Maasai and Kikuyu. In all individuals' linguistic performance, language contact finds expression in the form of borrowing and transfer of not only lexical items but also in sound patterns and grammatical structures which are transported from one language into the other. This is also the case in Kenyan English (KenE), which is characterized by a reduced vowel system, a tendency of diphthongs to be replaced by monophthongs, and a merger of the sounds /r/ and /!/ to a sound intermediate between the two at the pronunciation level (cf. Trudgill & Hannah, 2002; Schmied, 2004a). As regards grammar, speakers of KenE tend to extend the use of the progressive, to omit articles, to use female and male pronouns indiscriminately and to employ prepositions differently from speakers of other varieties of English. These characteristics reveal that KenE is 'adapted to local or regional linguistic conditions' (Bokamba, 1982:92). The English language has been indigenized, or 'altered so suit its new African surroundings and it acquires cultural identity through Africanization (Kachru, 2001:523). Besides the development of indigenized Englishes, language contact also results in code-switching, code-mixing, and in the development of mixed languages. Code-switching and code-mixing involve alternating between two or more languages for social, situational, or stylistic purposes. By contrast, mixed languages are contact Tag Heuer Carrera Replica Watches languages in which mixing is obligatory rather than optional (cf. Muysken, 2001:481) and in which 'the presence of elements from two languages marks the resulting language as reflecting a double identity. They are created by bilinguals and arise "within a single social or ethnic group because of a desire, or perhaps even a need, for an in-group language (Thomason, 2001:198). As Webb & Kembo-Sure (2000:41) point out, they develop 'mainly due to intense language contact, which results from urbanization and industrialization, as well as migrant labor. In Kenya, two mixed languages, Sheng and Engsh, have arisen over the last decades. The next section serves to locate the two within the linguistic ecology of Kenya. The components of an FMS are machine tools, which are usually CNC machine tools that perform machining operations, although other types of automated workstations such as inspection stations are also possible, a material-handling system, such as a conveyor system, which is capable of delivering work parts to any machine in the FMS, and control system that is responsible for communicating NC part programs to each machine and for coordinating the activities of the machines and the material-handling system. In addition, a fourth component of an FMS is human labor.
English and Multilingualism in Post-Colonial Spaces
