The somali language

[Midas]

I've been reading about african literatures and languages for the past week or so and I've come to realize that were honestly lucky that everybody speaks somali and it's our official language. Everywhere else in subsharan africa they use English and the local african languages are only spoken by each ethncity and nothing to little is written in them.( This was a big debate in the 60s when african literature began) the only places that really solely use native african languages besides us is ethiopia. But even there most people learn amahric and it's not their native language. Whereas in somalia although I'm not fully aware of it has a somewhat growing literature and publishing. ( Imagine where it'll be in a few decades). This has definitely as a diaspora made me appreciate our language more.

 

[Pearl of the Indian Ocean]

We've been blessed yet ppl want to install Arabic on us and any bit of resistance you'll be labelled as a 'anti-arab' and people will bend back and say 'you're just against Islam and hate arabs'

But back to the post I agree we are very lucky to have one language that we've had for thousands of years

 

[Magan Joseph]

We've been blessed yet ppl want to install Arabic on us and any bit of resistance you'll be labelled as a 'anti-arab' and people will bend back and say 'you're just against Islam and hate arabs'

But back to the post I agree we are very lucky to have one language that we've had for thousands of years

Nobody wants to install Arabic and Islam got nothing to do with this.

 

[Pearl of the Indian Ocean]

Nobody wants to install Arabic and Islam got nothing to do with this.

you can hundreds of post on this forum

 

[Zak12]

Its a combination of Somalis being too proud to use cadaan languages and British and Italian colonialism being rather light compared to the rest of Africa

 

[Idilinaa]

If it wasn't for the revolutionary regime. A lot of Somalis would still speaking Italian and writing in it.

Spoke about this being as one of their big achievements in another thread. Under a thread showing Somali dictionaries and texts books in physics, astronomy and mathematics:
Somali astrological, Scientific and Mathematical terms + their 1987 dictionaries

This is considered to be one of the big achievements of the Kacaanka. The use of the native language at all levels and in all contexts was possible since Somali acquired a very large number of technical and scientific terms to be able to express new concepts unfamiliar to the Somali culture.

I read a paper by a Somali linguist in explaining how this was made possible. They adopted a system of neologism − contrary to what Western languages usually do by using Greek and Latin − restoring many archaic Somali terms in disuse.

Those terms, closely related to traditional culture, were given new meanings in some way related to the original one; the result was the creation of a new terminology that was accessible to the majority of the Somali people, at the time still without a high degree of education. In this way the Somali vocabulary was enriched and it became possible to produce immediately many textbooks for all schools from primary to high schools.