African Cultures
Africa has more than 800 languages native to its continent. African cultures are so diverse that they are different from any other culture of the world. African cultures contain many different languages. African languages range from common French to languages unheard of to most people such as Swahili. African arts are much different than American arts. Their art involves much more creative pottery, masks, and paintings. Africa has a very interesting culture. Reasons being the people are very creative and like to express their individuality. The most diverse cultures in the world belong to Africa.
There are more than 800 languages spoken in the continent of Africa. Most Africans speak two or three languages, their primary language, or “mother-tongue”, and a second or third language to communicate with people from other close by areas (Fetzer A-102).
African languages are broken up into four individual categories: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, and Khosian. The most commonly heard two categories are Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Both of these groups can modify the meanings of words by the tone of the speakers’ voice. Niger-Congo languages are spoken of the people in West Africa, below the Sahara desert, Southern and Central Africa. Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken mainly in Central Africa. Afro-Asiatic languages are mainly spoken in Northern and Northeastern Africa. This group includes Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, and Arabic. Khoisan languages are spoken mostly in Southern Africa by Bushmen, members of traditionally roaming hunting people, and Hottentots, members of pastoral people of Namibia and South Africa. Khoisan languages are communicative through clicking sounds (Fetzer A-102).
Some South Africans speak Afrikaans, a language that was developed from Dutch. Europeans in African speak Portuguese, French, and English (Fetzer A-102). English is becoming very recognized in the countries of Africa. The 1991 South African Census concluded that 45% of the people in South Africa have a speaking knowledge of English. It also concluded that 10% refer to English as their “mother-tongue”. The most common languages in South Africa are Xhosa, Tswana, Zulu, and Swahili (African Languages).
Zulu is one of nine Bantu languages spoken in East Southern Africa. Approximately 8.8 million people speak t...
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... language of Africans (African Individuality).
Ceremonies are held when someone changes their social status and social relationship with those in the community. There are about six ceremonies in ones life. The first is their birth, the second is their maturity, third is their marriage, fourth is their child bearing, fifth is their elderliness, sixth is their death. Ceremonies are simply socially approved methods of participating in pleasurable events (African Individuality).
Africans view body modifications as beauty. Body modifications, such as piercing, have been practiced in Africa for centuries. People there believe that one is not fully human and cannot be distinguished from animals if not pierced. Piercing is brought with royalty and portrays courage of a person (African Cultures Piercing).
African cultures are different from any other culture in the world. The languages of Africa are unique in their own way. The arts of Africa are beautiful and different from any other arts in the world. African people are creative and like to express their individuality. Africa is a very original continent with lots of culture.
Forced labor and prostitution are widely known about, but some of the less-known reasons have to do with forced marriages and organ trading. The black market organ trade is not just something that was made up for novels and movies. Kidneys, livers, and any other organs that can be taken and reused are up for grabs. Traffickers will often try to bully their captives into willingly giving up an organ for free. Some captors will actually offer to pay the donator for their organ, but that usually ends up with the “donor” getting paid less than was agreed upon, and they are still being held against their will. In some cases the victim is knocked out, operated on, and left without an organ or
The play Twelfth Night, or What You Will by William Shakespeare is a 1601 comedy that has proven to be the source of experimentation in gender casting in the early twenty-first century due to its portrayal of gender in love and identity. The play centrally revolves around the love triangle between Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. However, Olivia and Orsino both believe Viola is a boy named Cesario. Ironically, only male actors were on the stage in Shakespeare’s time. This means that Olivia, Viola, and other female characters were played by young boys who still had voices at higher pitches than older males.
The video Mother Tongues: Languages Around the World discusses the various languages found in Africa, Oceana, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. The film starts with a brief description of Africa’s nearly 2000 languages. It explains that because of Africa’s relative isolation and long history of occupants it has the most languages of any land mass. The African languages include anything from Arabic, Swahili, or the ‘click’ language. Click languages are located only in Africa; in these languages the clicks function as normal consonants.The many languages of Africa all evolved differently due to separation between groups. For example the Nigeria area has over 400 languages and almost every language group is represented. Africa has unique sounds such as kp or gb which can be written has ibgo. These sounds are not common in places other than Africa. Swahili is probably the best-known African language. Developed along the Indian Ocean near areas such as Kenya. Swahili was adopted from many languages especially Arabic. Swahili has taken on an international image as one of the main languages of Africa.
Africa is considered to be a multi-lingual country. There are eleven officially recognized languages their, many of which are often spoken but not widespread. English is generally understood across the country. It is one of the eleven common spoken languages but it only ranks 5th out of the eleven spoken languages. During the 15th and the 19th century, major changes had happened to the African and North American continents. Europeans ventured to Africa where they began a trans-Atlantic slave trade. Many Africans were taken as free people and then forced into slavery in South America, the Caribbean and North America. This slave trade had brought about a different type of racism. It was the color of your skin that determined whether a person would be a free citizen or be enslaved for life. This slave trade also devastated African lives and their heritage.
Africa is too big of a continent for all its history to be discovered. All its history may never be discovered, but at least we can continue to search until we can get accurate descriptions of Africa’s history. To understand the history, we need better equipment that will track the human activity of the pre-historic years. Understanding the art and language as equal will allow us to depict why communities did the things they did. Also, knowing that the same humans today were not the same as the ones in ancient Africa can open the discussion of how people acted towards the climate and why did they people become
The causes of reading difficulties often arise because of learning disabilities such as dyslexia, poor preparation before entering school, no value for literacy, low school attendance, insufficient reading instruction, and/or even the way students were taught to read in the early grades. The struggles that students “encounter in school can be seen as socially constructed-by the ways in which schools are organized and scheduled, by assumptions that are made about home life and school abilities, by a curriculum that is often devoid of connections to students’ lives, and by text that may be too difficult for students to read” (Hinchman, and Sheridan-Thomas166). Whatever the reason for the existence of the reading problem initially, by “the time a [student] is in the intermediate grades, there is good evidence that he will show continued reading g...
Intermittent fasting recommends abstaining from food during certain times of the day or week. This means changing your eating schedule, and adding/substituting a few things to the kind of food you consume. As all effective diets go, you need to remove those that contribute to unwanted weight gain too.
Human Trafficking is, “The Recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by the means of the threat or force, or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of prostitution of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving payments or benefits to achieve consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of
In Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, gender identity and alternative sexualities are highlighted through the depiction of different characters and personalities. In the play, Viola disguises herself as a man thereby raising a merry-go-around of relationships that are actually based on a lie rather than actual fact. Viola attracts the attention of Olivia since she thinks that Viola is a man but even more fascinating is the fact that Orsino is attracted to Viola although he thinks that she is a man. In another twist Viola is attracted to Orsino and has fell in love with him although their love cannot exist since Orsino thinks that Viola is a man.
The African culture were changed by trade which created cultural diffusion. The african culture was changed by the Europeans that they traded with, this is cultural diffusion. Cultural diffusion is the movement of seen and unseen characteristics of culture between two or more societies.
The Greek economy has seen a large collapse following the recent worldwide recession. The European Union has expressed concerns for the impact that Greece’s economic collapse will negatively affect other member nations. Greece and the European Union are working to reduce the Greek deficit and to contain the economic crisis to Greece.
Rites form and essential part of social life. Rites invoke ancestors and the dead. The whole person, body, and soul are totally involved in worship. There are many rites of purification of individuals and communities. Religious sacredness is preserved in ritual, in dress and the arrangements of the places of worship. The sick are healed in rites, which involve their families and the community. Some of the traditional blessings are rich and very meaningful. In worship and sacrifice there is co-responsibility each person contributes his share in a spirit of participation. Symbols bridge the spheres of the sacred and secular and so make possible a balanced and unified view of reality.
Literacy is an on-going skill that teachers and students alike should commonly study and practice in all grades. Problems faced by teachers, especially teachers in higher grades, are not having the skills to be effective teachers of literacy. To effectively teach literacy across content areas, a teacher would need skills such as knowledge of the reading process and the ability to cultivate the knowledge gained in order to make informed decisions within their classrooms (Clary, Oglan, Styslinger,
Before the Western world had an influence on them, Africa, like the other continents had stable systems that differed, but resembled other civilizations around the world. Ibn, Battuta, Visit from Mombasa
There are eleven official languages in South Africa; they are English, Afrikaans, Ndebele, Sepedi, Xhosa, Venda, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Zulu, Swazi and Tsonga. South Africa also recognizes eight unofficial languages: Fanagalo, Khoe, Lobedu, Nama, Northern Ndebele, Phuthi, San and South African Sign Language. Even the variation of languages and dialects reflect the diversity of the culture. Heritage, culture, customs or...