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Clash of Oralities and Textualities: the Colonization of the Communicative Space in Sub-Saharan Africa

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Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa

Abstract

Before the arrival of colonialism, most societies in sub-Saharan Africa were oral communities whose languages were not written. This is interesting because Africa was the first place in the world where fully written linguistic characters were established and used for communication with the introduction of the hieroglyphics alphabet and structure of writing in ancient Egypt in about 3000 B.C. The Egyptian system represented a system of writing that mainly contained pictorial characters. As such, it was sometimes called the picture script of ancient Egyptian priesthood.

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Authors

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Dip Kapoor Edward Shizha

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© 2010 Dip Kapoor and Edward Shizha

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Abdi, A.A. (2010). Clash of Oralities and Textualities: the Colonization of the Communicative Space in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Kapoor, D., Shizha, E. (eds) Indigenous Knowledge and Learning in Asia/Pacific and Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230111813_10

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