Research Projects

RoLA - Romance Languages in Africa

This project is aimed at developing a comprehensive panorama of the Romance languages throughout the African continent. 38 African countries are characterized by a French, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish past that is perceptible today in a sometimes more, sometimes less direct way. Each project partner analyses a specific African area according to a uniform set of criteria and a uniform structure. The scholars lay out the sociolinguistic situation in one or more countries, sketch the linguistic history of the Romance languages concerned, the linguistic characteristics of their local usage, as well as the internal and external language policies applied. The project thus results in the first comprehensive description of the Romance languages in Africa following a coherent and systematic approach, thus allowing to identify differences and similarities between the specific situations.