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Endangered Languages and Languages in Danger: Issues of documentation, policy, and language rights
Edited by Luna Filipović and Martin Pütz
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 42] 2016
► pp. 335–349

Language transmission and use in a bilingual setting in rural Tanzania

Findings from an in-depth study of Ngoni

| University of Gothenburg
When studying languages in a bi- or multilingual language contact situation, it is necessary to go beyond the schematic evaluations and scales describing language endangerment which have been developed over the last decades. Here the case of the Tanzanian language Ngoni, represented by quantitative sociolinguistic data from fieldwork in a rural area in the Ruvuma Region in Tanzania, shows that a too general assessment can be misleading. In Tanzania it is the African language Swahili, and not the global language English and ongoing globalization, which at present represents the major threat to other African languages and the maintenance of these languages. The study indicates that Ngoni is more at risk than would have been judged from endangerment scales.
Keywords: African language, globalization, language contact, language transmission, maintenance, Ngoni, Swahili, Tanzania
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 3 October 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.42.14ros
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Mapunda, Gastor & Tove Rosendal
2021. Imagined Futures and New Technology: Youths’ Language Attitudes in Songea, Tanzania. Language Matters 52:1 ► pp. 92 ff. DOI logo
Rosendal, Tove
2017. Identity Construction and Norms of Practice among Bilingual Ngoni in Rural Tanzania. Language Matters 48:2 ► pp. 3 ff. DOI logo
Rosendal, Tove
2018. Speaking of tradition: how the Ngoni talk about value maintenance and change. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39:9 ► pp. 776 ff. DOI logo

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