See Melchers and Shaw p. 145 for African countries where English is used.

Melchers and Shaw

Africa

• Liberia – Rest of Englsh-speaking Africa

• Melchers and Shaw put Liberian English in the Inner Circle, p,120;

• they note its affinity with AAVE

Liberia

• 1822 American Colonization Society established “Liberia” for freed slaves.

• Only “American” colony in Africa• 20 000 black American settlers • Costa da Pimenta, Pepper Coast, Windward

Coast• 1847 Republic of Liberia established by the

American élite.

Liberia

• Only African English which distinguishes

• HappY = • No h-dropping• VrV is a “one-tap trill”• Tendency towards unchecked syllables – loss of

final consonants

Liberia

• Liberian English• Kruh Pidgin• Merico (defunct)• Liberian Kreyol

Throughout the West Coast:• Crio

• Wes Kos (WAP)

Africa Africa

Outside Liberia

list of African languages

Africa – outside Liberia

• 5 – term vowel system

CLOSE (HIGH

BA

CKF

RO

NT

OPEN (LOW)

CLOSE (HIGH

BA

CKF

RO

NT

OPEN (LOW)

Igbo

Africa – outside Liberia • 5 – term vowel system is common

•some larger systems but none as large as EnglishIgbo has

but Vowel Harmony means that

cannot combine with

so bit - beat

but not *beating

Africa

Africa

"In fact in African English as a whole it is very common for pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and so on to be stressed in running speech; and a further consequence of this is that no weak forms are used. Compare the sentence She's a rascal you know in its Est-African syllable-timed form [1Sí ze 1raskal 1jú no] with its English-English stressed-time form [Siz0 1rAsk0l ju 1n0u]"

Wells 643-3

Wells p, 639 on Yoruba

Yoruba: 28 millions (third most spoken African language).- Dialect continuum

Charts from Wiki

p. 638-9

Yoruba in Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Togo

Wells p. 637