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Loanwords from African Languages
96501044 Nancy Kao
Intro
• A few words from languages that were spoken in the west of African have entered English:
• 1. by way of Portuguese and Spanish in the end of the 16th century..…… “banana”
• 2. by Louisiana French…………. “voodoo”
• 3. by Brazilian Portuguese and Cuban Spanish…………………………… “zombie”
Banana
• Bananas were introduced to the Americas by Portuguese sailors who brought the fruits from West Africa in the 16th century. The word “banana” is of West African origin, from the Wolof language.
• Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania.
Voodoo
• Vodun or Vudun (also spelled Voodoo) is a traditional organized religion of coastal West Africa from Nigeria to Ghana.
• Louisiana Voodoo is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions which developed within the French, Spanish, and Creole speaking African American population of the U.S. state, Louisiana. It became syncretized with the Catholicism and Francophone culture of south Louisiana as a result of the slave trade.
Zombie
• The original zombies occured in the West African Vodun religion and its American offshoots Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo.
• "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake lwa Damballah Wedo, of Niger-Congo origin; it is akin to the Kikongo word nzambi, which means "god".
Other words
• cola - from West African languages (Temne kola, Mandinka kolo)
• coffee – disputed. either from the Ethiopian region (Kingdom of Kaffa), where coffee originated; or Arabic kahwa
• conga - feminized form of Congo through Spanish
Other words
• jazz - from West African languages (Mandinka jasi, Temne yas)
• jumbo - from Swahili (jambo or jumbe) or from Kongo nzamba- "elephant"
• safari - from Swahili “travel”; ultimately from Arabic
• tango - probably from Ibibio tamgu
Thanks for your listening!
Sources: text book and Wikipedia
