The Economist October 30th 2021 Middle East & Africa 61doubted that Mr Hamdok’s efforts to rein
them in, and to launch investigations into
the army’s role in massacres under the pre
vious regime, could spell trouble.
The timing of the coup has nonetheless
raised eyebrows. In the week leading up to
it, thousands demonstrated in Khartoum
against the armed forces in the largest
protest since 2019. The coup came less than
two days after the visit of Jeffrey Feltman,
America’s special envoy to the Horn of Af
rica, during which he urged the generals
not to stage one. Since Mr Bashir’s down
fall, the generals as well as civilian politi
cians have been anxious to repair ties with
the West after decades of sanctions. Speak
ing to The Economistin July Mr Burhan
crowed that Sudan’s “international isola
tion...is now over”. His government has
mended ties with Israel and persuaded
America to remove Sudan from its list of
state sponsors of terrorism. Yet much of
that progress may be undone by this coup.
America, Sudan’s biggest bilateral do
nor, has already halted some $700m in aid.
The World Bank, which in March said Su
dan could access up to $2bn in grants, has
also paused disbursements. Diplomatical
ly the regime looks isolated, too. The Afri
can Union (au) has suspended Sudan and
the Arab League has called for a restoration
of the transitional government.
That the generals were so brazen as to
risk antagonising Sudan’s biggest donor
suggests they were confident of having the
staunch backing of allies such as Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and
Egypt. “Without regional cover Burhan
would not do this,” says Magdi elGizouli
of the Rift Valley Institute, a thinktank
based in London and Nairobi.
In grabbing power Mr Burhan has made
an already combustible region even more
so. The auhas its hands full with wartorn
Ethiopia next door, where 400,000 people
face famine. A border dispute between
Ethiopia and Sudan has been aggravated by
the internal tensions of both countries.
Both sides have moved troops to the area
and skirmishes have broken out. It may not
take much to spark a fullblown war.
Meanwhile much of Sudan itself is rea
dy to ignite. Some 430,000 people have
been uprooted this year by various internal
conflicts, such as fighting between farmers
and cattle herders. In Khartoum itself,
protests against the coup have already
been met with force, with at least seven
people killed and more than 140 injured.
Then there is the risk that Sudan’s potpour
ri of militias and security forces might turn
their guns on one another. Mr Burhan and
Mr Dagalo may be working together on this
coup, as they did on the previous one, but
there is little love, or trust, between them.
The Sudanese spring, until recently a
source of hopeina troubled region, is turn
ing into a winter.n
I
n 1991americanaudienceshadan
introduction to Xhosa, one of South
Africa’s most clickfilled languages,
when Miriam Makeba (pictured) ap
peared on “The Cosby Show”. When the
celebrated South African singer started
flicking her tongue as she said her name,
fouryearold Olivia asked, “Oh I’m sorry,
do you have a cold?”
In most parts of the world the clicks
of Zulu and Xhosa, the languages spoken
most commonly at home in South Africa,
sound completely foreign. Duolingo, the
world’s biggest languagelearning plat
form, is hoping to make them more
familiar. Next year it will offer lessons in
both to its 40m active users.
This poses new challenges. For the
first time its course designers will have
to figure out how to teach clicks in an
app. There are three types: c (a ‘tsk tsk’
sound), x (the sound you’d make to get a
horse to speed up) and q (a bit like the
sound of a champagne cork popping).
Recording native speakers and using
audio lessons will be much like teaching
sounds in any other language, says Myra
Awodey of Duolingo. But it will also have
to explain how one should thrash one’s
tongue about to make the lateral (not to
be confused with the alveolar or dental)
click that so confounds people trying to
say nothing more than “Xhosa”.
The firm says the courses will have a
large potential audience, but migrants
and refugees living in South Africa are a
group that could particularly benefit.
Elsewhere Duolingo has stumbled upon
some unexpected uses of its app, such asa largenumberofpeoplelearningSwed
ish in Sweden. The reason, it found, was
that migrants were trying to integrate
into their new country. In South Africa
there are more than 2.9m of them, in
cluding 500,0001.5m from Zimbabwe.
Learning Zulu or Xhosa can help
migrants blend in. Those coming to
South Africa from elsewhere in Africa
often face abuse if they stand out by not
speaking an indigenous language. There
is even a derogatory term for black mi
grants who speak their own languages,
Makwerekwere, which supposedly mim
ics the “kwere kwere” sounds they make
that grate on the ears of locals.
Speaking one of these languages has
other perks, too. The two have many
similarities, so that people who speak
Zulu, say, can easily understand and talk
with someone who speaks Xhosa or any
of the other tongues in the same family,
which includes Swati (spoken in Eswati
ni) and Ndebele (which is common in
parts of Zimbabwe). Those who pick up
Zulu or Xhosa can thus chatter with at
least 40% of South Africans.
Ms Awodey says Duolingo has “a role
to play in preserving and teaching en
dangered languages”. It may be a stretch
to call Zulu or Xhosa endangered. But
local nonprofits and Trevor Noah, South
Africa’s funniest export, have teamed up
with the firm to bring them to its plat
form. The polyglottic Mr Noah has a
particular interest in one. His Xhosa
speaking mother raised him using Eng
lish, a fine language, but one that is
exceedingly difficult to get a click out of.AfricanlanguagesFree clicks
Alanguage-teaching app is grappling with tongue-twisting Zulu and XhosaSinging those alveolars loud