Dr. Mohamed Abdou Moindjie

Dr. Mohamed Abdou Moindjie

4:50 pm - 5:35 pm

The Survival of a minor Language under the Hegemony of a major Language: The Case of Comoran and French.

The Comoran language is the native language of Comorans and is one of the official languages of the Comoros, which are Comoran, French, and Arabic. It is one of the Bantu languages; it borrowed some words from Swahili, Arabic, French and Malagasy. Even though it is the language used by 95% of the population it is unjustly marginalized and remains only a tool for oral communication. French and Arabic become the languages of education and administration from primary schools. Colonialization and religion have affected the development of Comoran language as a tool of acquiring knowledge and understanding the rest of the world. Even though Comoran language has the same parts of speech like French, government elites in Africa in general and in Comoros in particular wrongly link development to Major languages like French and English, a received idea which is not linguistically and scientifically proven.