ABSTRACT
In the history of Negro-African nationalism linguistic claims have played nothing like the role they did in the rise of European. Furthermore there was an almost equally noteworthy predominance given to English in the former British colonies, although here Negro-African languages were widely used administratively and in schools. These statements obviously run the risk of breathing life into that old canard, which some people still bring up now and again, of the 'basically concrete nature of African languages' and their supposed 'inaptitude to express abstract values'. The chapter looks at the social and political vocabulary of an African society. Colonialization resulted in the setting up of arbitrary and artificial boundaries which enclose societies of the most heterogeneous nature and also imposed on these societies a non-African socio-political system of foreign domination. Afro-European bilingualism assured its possessors of a real technical monopoly, but it did not happen without posing serious problems of development for the new states.
