The Amazing Languages of Africa - sounds, grammar and writing systems of African languages

Africa is home to amazing languages. In this entertaining video, I go on a linguistic safari around the languages of Africa, exploring their complex grammar, magnificent array of speech sounds (including the unique click consonants) and some of their home-grown writing systems.

Semitic languages span three continents and I look at how Amharic, the main language of Ethiopia, changes verbs at the beginning as well as the end and how it creates groups of words based on consonant roots.

I love the Bantu languages, with their large number of noun classes and far-reaching agreement and I look at how this works in Swahili.

The Khoisan languages of Southern Africa have an amazing array of speech sounds, including clicks, but please don't call them "click languages". They have shared these sounds with their neighbours and I took Xhosa lessons to learn to incorporate them into fluent speech. As well as clicks, some African languages have ejectives, lateral fricatives (which they share with Welsh!) and syllabic nasals.

The Ge'ez writing system; used to write Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya; is beautiful and works in a fascinating way, whereas Tamazight looks like it was created by a minimalist designer!

0:00 Intro from Nairobi, Africa (that's a joke, by the way)
0:43 Coming up
1:07 Black History Month
2:00 There is no such thing as a primitive language
2:18 The language families of Africa
2:27 Afro-Asiatic languages
2:44 Semitic
3:00 Verb conjugations in Amharic
3:32 Consonant roots
3:56 N G R consonant framework in Amharic
4:21 Nilo Saharan languages
4:55 Niger-Congo languages
5:52 Bantu languages
6:18 Bantu grammar
6:26 Noun classes
7:25 Swahili noun class agreement
8:56 Conveying meaning using noun classes
9:25 Using noun classes to differentiate between homonyms
10:01 Comparison of Bantu names for region, person, people and language across languages
10:44 Amazing repertoire of speech sounds
11:05 The !xo language
11:35 Khoisan languages
12:17 Consonant repertoire
12:29 Don't call them click languages
13:29 English is a lisp language
14:12 Sprachbund as an explanation of how unrelated languages can have similar features
15:42 Shona whistled sibilants
16:20 Common phonetic features
16:24 Syllabic nasals
16:37 Lateral fricatives
17:13 Ejective consonants
18:23 Burnley isn't on the Tibetan plateau
18:34 Austronesian languages
18:42 Malagasy
19:39 Writing systems
19:47 Tifinagh
20:06 Ge'ez script
20:16 What's an abugida?
21:28 Outro

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Malayo Polynesian By Masjawad99 - map based on with information on primary branches extracted from Smith, Alexander D. (December 2017). "The Western Malayo-Polynesian Problem". Oceanic Linguistics 56 (2): 435–490. University of Hawai'i Press. DOI:10.1353/ol.2017.0021.., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84242603