by R. Asmerom
Linguist John McWhorter brings up a good point in a recent article for The Root, in which he questions why Swahili, of all languages, was chosen to represent the ancestral language of Black America. Considering that Swahili is a language spoken by people across East African countries like Kenya and Tanzania, it doesn’t necessarily make sense that it was chosen to represent for African ancestry over thousands of other possible choices. The fact of the matter is that the Black Americans, and the Black Diaspora, mostly originate from Western regions of Africa. “If black Americans are to seek an ancestral language, shouldn’t it be one that our ancestors actually spoke?” asked McWhorter.
There are hundreds of languages spoken in West Africa, mainly because each country contains numerous ethnicities. The borders don’t properly form nation states, as they don’t represent natural delineations determined by common heritages but demarcations forced upon by Westerners for the ease and sake of colonization. Even if we were to replace Swahili with an African language, choosing one, above all else, would be a challenge.
McWhorter suggests that Twi, a language from Ghana, would be a suitable choice. “Many slaves brought to the New World by the English, or sold to them, were from Ghana, then known famously as the Gold Coast, where Twi was a dominant local language,” he wrote. And that option seems quite logical.
