Malawian English is the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

as spoken in

Malawi Malawi (; or aláwi Tumbuka: ''Malaŵi''), officially the Republic of Malawi, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast ...

. English is the country's

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

Introduction

English was introduced into Malawi towards the end of the 19th century, due to the influence of British explorers, missionaries, the arrival of the

African Lakes Corporation The African Lakes Corporation plc was a British company originally set-up in 1877 by Scottish businessmen to co-operate with Presbyterian missions in what is now Malawi. Despite its original connections with the Free Church of Scotland, it operated ...

, and colonial administrators present since the establishment in the 1890s of the

British Central Africa Protectorate The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from vis ...

. The seventy years of

British colonial rule The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts est ...

that followed the

Scramble for Africa The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa, or Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, annexation, division, and colonisation of Africa, colonization of most of Africa by seven Western Europe, Western European powers during a ...

, set the groundwork for English to grow into the area's dominant and most socially prestigious language.

Dominance

Since Malawian independence, the dominance of English has continued: * official government records are written in English, * parliament conducts its deliberations in English, * the laws of Malawi are written in English, * progression into

secondary Secondary may refer to: Science and nature * Secondary emission, of particles ** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products * The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding i ...

and

higher education Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...

requires certification of competence in English, * nearly all Malawian newspapers are published in English (though some include small Chichewa supplements), * English remains the language of commerce in the country. This remains true despite a large majority of Malawians speaking Chichewa and the small number of English speakers outside urban centres. Also, in Malawian government schools, students are taught in Chichewa, and learn English as a second language from about age 10. But in international schools in Malawi (like Saint Andrew's International High School in

Blantyre Blantyre () is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with an enumerated 800,264 inhabitants . It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, L ...

) which follow the British curriculum, English is the language students are taught in, and do not learn Chichewa at all, as it is regarded as a local language.

Replacement of local vocabulary

English words are replacing their equivalents in other Malawi languages. One study of a

corpus Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...

of Chichewa discourse captured over a ten-year period found that references to numbers greater than 3 were exclusively in English, at least in urban areas. See page 503
Abstract
is in HTML format.

Non-linguistic expressions

Malawian English features some non-linguistic expressions that are still used, such as "eesh!", an exclamation meaning "oh my!"

Notes

External links

Malawi's Ministry of Information and Tourism

Malawi SDNP
an
UNDP Malawi
supported by the

United Nations Development Programme The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)french: Programme des Nations unies pour le développement, PNUD is a United Nations agency tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human dev ...

University of Malawi website
includin

Mzuzu University
Languages attested from the 19th century Languages of Malawi Dialects of English {{English-lang-stub