A History of English Language

A history of the english language 306
with (court, go out with), wedding bells (invitation to a wedding), take in (become
pregnant), be in state (be pregnant), give kola (offer a bribe), have long legs (have
influence), cry die (wake, funeral rites).
The morphology and syntax of English in Africa have generally the same structures as
those of the international varieties of standard English, although one may note formations
with the plural suffix of words that are not ordinarily count nouns (equipments, aircrafts,
deadwoods, offsprings). Also, some standard English transitive verbs gain particles and
become phrasal verbs, as in voice out instead of “voice” (“I am going to voice out my
opinion”); discuss about instead of “discuss” (“We shall discuss about that later”); and
cope up with instead of “cope with.” After some verbs the to is dropped from the
following infinitive (“enable him do it”). As in other second-language varieties and
pidgins, certain tag questions are common: “He loves you, isn’t it?” or “He loves you, not
so?”
In East Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi, Ethiopia,
Somalia, and Seychelles, the syntactic and lexical patterns of English that differ from
varieties spoken elsewhere in the world often do so in ways that parallel the West African
divergencies. For example, verbs that are phrasal in standard English lose the adverbial
particle but keep the meaning of the phrasal verb (“Her name cropped in the
conversation” for “cropped up”; “I picked him outside his house and he dropped at work”
for “picked him up” and “dropped him off”). Some nouns in Kenyan and Tanzanian
colloquial speech have a plural form but are treated as singulars: behaviours, bottoms,
laps, minds, nighties, noses, popcorns. Hancock and Angogo point out that in “My noses
are stuffed up,” the influence of Bantu is clearly apparent since there is no single word
for nostril in Bantu. 27 The Bantu language Kiswahili is the most important African
language throughout East Africa, and from its influence the East African variety of
English has acquired some of its characteristic phonological patterns (for example, the
lack of [ð]/[θ] as in [zis siŋ] this thing). From Kiswahili also have come loanwords that
have passed into international currency: safari, simba (lion), bwana (master), jambo
(hello).
4. South Asia.
The issues concerning English in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal are
similar in many respects to those in Africa except that a clearly identifiable South Asian
variety of English has emerged over the years. The problems and prospects of Indian
English were summarized by Raja Rao more than half a century ago: “The telling has not
been easy. One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s
own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain
27
Ian F.Hancock and Rachel Angogo, “English in East Africa,” in Bailey and Görlach, p. 316.