How we are living? Either in past or in future.We gain experience due to our our past memories and always think of future.All our actions are based on the experience we have gained by our experiences in past and we plan for tomorrow.  The past memories hunt us all the time and either we live our life in DARK or in LIGHT,depending on our past experiences.

It is correct that we should learn our lessons from our past experiences,but we should not live in PAST.The lessons we learnt from our PAST makes our PRESENT.The PRESENT is the step to our FUTURE. We should live our life only in PRESENT, neither PAST nor FUTURE, since what has happened in past can not be reversed and future is not known to anybody. The PRESENT will become PAST tomorrow and  our PRESENT actions done by us makes our FUTURE. Hence the most important is our PRESENT.We should live our life in PRESENT. We should enjoy the PRESENT and this is the TRUTH of LIFE.

What our MASTERS are teaching us?Do Meditation. The present life has become so complicated that Ninety percent of diseases are caused due to mental stress. Who is responsible for such complications in our lives. Only WE are responsible and nobody else. Meditation is the best method to calm down our mind and to get rid off many diseases. One can find thousands of such MASTERS charging huge fees to teach us various methods of Meditation.If we seriously think about meditation, then you will find that Meditation is nothing but living in PRESENT. By living in PRESENT, we can have dramatic changes in our life.JUST TRY TO LIVE IN PRESENT. Start with living in PRESENT for ONE Hour.Then think about that particular hour and you will see that the best time of your life was that particular hour.By experiencing this particular hour, you can go ahead and live whole of your life in PRESENT.

To achieve all round success in your life, you should live in PRESENT.

ALL THE BEST.These few words can change whole universe.Every word is DIAMOND,if you seriously apply to your life.

Some words are very beautiful. Their sound is also beautiful like SUCCESS....HAPPY....WEALTH. Try to say loudly any of these words 'SUCCESS...SUCCESS...SUCCESS' or HAPPY...HAPPY...HAPPY' or 'WEALTH...WEALTH...WEALTH'. Observe what happen.Although these are beautiful words,yet they evolve different emotions in different people. Very strange.It all depends on your mental attitude. These words can inspire one whereas can also cause depression in others. Actually these are THOUGHTS which can cause inspiration or depression. If a person has remained failure in his life, then these words,if uttered, will remind him of his failures and cause depression. Everything connected with success will evoke negative feelings.

 

WE HAVE POWER TO CHANGE OUR LIFE

THOUGHTS play a vital role in our life. GOD has created us to expand, to grow, because HE wants HIS creations to grow.Even a small grass leaf can penetrate through a solid wall,if it comes in between its growth. After all we are human beings and have greater powers to grow,but if one is a failure in all his actions, then his thoughts also become negative and even a slight sound of above stated words can have negative impact.

 

WILL-POWER is the only power which can change our lives.With deep concentration,we can enhance our will power. Remember last time when you deeply concentrated on even your actions.You have not. If we make it a habit to concentrate on ourselves,then forget about failures.The best method is to think seriously about all of your actions before going to bed at night.Explore all the actions/reactions and find out your strengths and weaknesses. Think of ways to improve our strengths and remove our weaknesses.By this way we will have a good concentration power and of course WILL POWER.

 

A strong Will Power can change our destiny,our life,I mean to say that you can change your life with strong will power. Thus main aim of our life should be to increase our will power. Concentration and Will Powers are our steering wheels,which can take us to heights of HIMALAYA.

 

Discussions are not only formal.. We often discuss Informally...

Consider a situation that you are enjoying songs on a radio or TV and suddenly your favourite song is aired. Your immediate temptation is to increase the volume. Why?Its because you want others also to listen to it. You want to let others know that you like this song. In such a situation if someone else happens to comment,”Aha! This song is from XYZ movie”,a conversation takes place immediately between you and that some one else. If both of you have,by chance,watched the movie”,you find yourself discussing about the hero,heroin,villain and the story including what you liked and what you did not like.

Here starts an Informal Group Discussion...

Ever thought why are we engaging ourselves in conversations?The reason is that man is a social animal. Man likes to be associated with a society. i.e, a group. He has a natural desire to be the part of a group. This desire is so strong that if a person is left to himself,with no one to talk to for a long period,he will develop symptoms of discomfort.

If you look back and think for a moment,you will realise that you will frequently enter into Discussion with others on one topic or the other. You would also have noticed that different persons have different opinions about a single event. Sometimes,you may be in agreement with one such opinions and sometimes you may have a contrary opinion of your own. If you do not agree with someone,you put forward your own view and give reasons why you have this view. Thus you are involuntarily trying to influence the other person's opinion. Similalrly,that other person,who has his own reasons for his opinion,discloses those reasons to you. Sometimes,you are able to convince him. Sometimes,you get convinced. Sometimes a heated conversation starts. You have thus seen that man's entire existence presupposes a relationship with other human beings. He influences them by speech and actions and in turn they affect him.

 

Why do people form groups and why do they have Group Discussion?It is a natural tendency,just like the natural tendency of liquids to find the lowest place and settle there. You throw a bucketful of water on the floor and the water will automatically find where the lowest place is regardless of the fact where you throw the water. Similarly we,the human beings,have a natural tendency to associate with others. In our childhood,we had our favourite students in school and playmates at home. We naturally become members of a group in which we feel comfortable or “at home”. Most of us are more comfortable in some kinds of situation than in others. Likewise,groups are also more lively in the presence of some particular person that in presence of another. Here,stop for a moment. Let us have a small break. Think about yourself. Think about the kinds of people(groups) in which you prefer to keep quiet. Think about the conditions that increase your comfort level and those which discourage you. This way,although you will not be able to create an ideal environment for yourself every time, but you will have a better understanding of yourself. You will know your shortcomings. Once these are clear to you, you have the natural instincts to find the remedy or learn how to manage them.

You have seen that you have always been having discussion in your personal life. What you said during this discussion,came naturally to you without any preparation. You conversed with people who were known to you,you also conversed with strangers. Sometimes you have even argued without fully understanding the subject matter of the argument. So why this special preparation for Group Discussion now? You would say that those were personal and informal group discussion,outcome of which did not make any difference and that these personal discussion are quite different from the formal “Group Discussion” on which your whole career and life depends. I do not intend to disagree with you. The only thing I want you to realise is that you already know what GD is. You have some practise of it also. All you are to do is to refine your talents...!!

 

Intorduction

The recent statistical report says that, in the continent of Africa there are more than 200 languages spoken by the people.To be specific the number of languages, spoken in African continent lies between 2000 and 3000 languages.

Apart from this there are over 8000  dialects, that fits into these 300 languages.The major four classification of  language families that are spoken in Africa can be divided into six types namely

1)Afro - Asiatic

2)Nilo - Saharan

3)Niger - Congo A

4)Niger - Congo B

5)Khoi - San

6)Austronesian

The image below shows exactly where these kind of languages are spoken

To be specific most these African Languages are group of languages that are native to the African continent(with some exception) and the the scholars estimate that out of these 3000 different kinds of languages 50  languages may have 500,000 or more speakers.

But the fact is that the majority of African languages are spoken only by relatively few people. For example languages like Hadza,which is spoken in Tanzania, unfortunately ranks among the languages with the fewest speakers, because reports says that only about 200 people speak this language and the people who speak this Hazda language are called as the Hazda people and the image belows shows the Hazda people

 

On the contrary the most widely spoken languages includes Swahili and Hausa and it is estimated that more than 50 million people speak Swahili, and this language is spoken by the people who live in East and Central Africa.

In the case of Hausa language, report says that about 25 million people speak this language, and primarily they are located in the West African country of Nigeria. Apart form these two languages other other African languages with large numbers of speakers includes

1)Fulfulde in Senegal, Cameroon, and Chad

2)Yoruba in Nigeria and Benin

3)Igbo in Nigeria.

But apart from all these reports the truth is that not all languages spoken in Africa are native to the continent. The Northern Africa speak Arabic as their first language, and it was brought to Africa by immigrants from Arabia between the 7th and the 11th centuries.

In the case of Madagascar Malagasy is the language spoken by most of the people, and belongs to the Austronesian group of languages with origins in Indonesia. Apart from this, starting from the 15th century the European colonists brought English, French, and Portuguese to Africa.

Niger - Congo Family

This Niger-Congo family descends from a protolanguage which has its history 5000 years back.It has been estimated that f rom30 crores to 40 crores of people in Africa used to speak the languages in the Niger-Congo . This Niger - Congo family has seven main subgroups.The image below shows the map of Africa, which shows variou languages spoken in different parts of the continent.

The seven subgroups of the Niger-Congo family includes

1)Benue-Congo (including Bantu)

2)West Atlantic

3)Mande

4)Voltaic

5)Kwa

6)Adamawa East and

7)Kordofanian.

1)Benue-Congo (including Bantu)

Out of this seven, six of which cover West Africa and the Central African Republic. One of the language which comes under the Benue-Congo is the Bantu language and  is a single offshoot. This Bantu is spoken in most of the southern half of Africa.

The Benue-Congo subgroup is the largest branch of the Niger-Congo family.Report states that over 100 million people speak the Bantu language.

This Batu language is the largest rapidly growing language in Africa , with its users are rapidly increasing.Historians and archaeologists found a reason for this and they have found that the rapid expansion of Bantu languages begin from the proto-Bantu in Cameroon and eastern Nigeria and history reveals that it occurred in three major waves of migration, from 3000 to 4000 years ago.

These researches says that the first wave of expansion was created in North Bantu and it was succedde by the second and third expansions which was developed into Western and Eastern Bantu.

Of these Bantu languages, the most widely spoken language is Swahili and in Africa there are some 50 million speakers,and they are mostly concentrated to Eastern Bantu.Apart from this Bantu language, other Bantu languages are given below based on the region where they are used by the people

Bantu Languages spoken in Southern Africa:

i)Shona

ii)Tswana

iii)Zulu

iv)Xhosa


Bantu Languages spoken Eastern Africa:

i)Kikuyu

ii)Kisukuma

iii)Luo

Bantu Languages spoken Central Africa:

i)Kikongo

ii)Kinyarwanda

iii)Kirundi

2)West Atlantic

The West Atlantic subgroup are spoken mostly near the Africa’s Atlantic coast,and the countries which speak these languages includes from Senegal to Chad.In this family the dominant language which is used by most of the people is Fulfulde.

This Fulfulde has more than 13 million speakers and they are mostly used by people in Senegal, Cameroon, and Chad. Apart from this languages, other languages in this subgroup is

i)"Wolof" used in Senegal and

ii)"Temne" in Guinea.

3)Mande

Usually the languages in this sub group are spoken in

i)Senegal

ii)Mali

iii)Guinea

iv)Liberia

v)Sierra Leone.

In this subgroup Bambara,which is spoken in Mali, is considered the principal language .Other Mande languages in this catoegary includes

i)"Mende" spoken in Sierra Leone

ii)"Kpelle" spoken in Liberia and Guinea.

4)Voltaic

The other name for this Voltaic sub group is Gur,this language has speakers in different countries in Africa and it includes

i)Mali

ii)Cote d’Ivoire

iii)Ghana

iv)Togo

v)Benin

vi)Nigeria and

vii)Burkina Faso.

5)Kwa

The two most important language which comes under this subgroup includes the Twi and Yoruba, and they are mainly in Ghana and Nigeria respectively. Apart rom these two language, the language which is spoken widely in this subgroup is Yoruba, which has speakers of more than 22 million.

Other than these languages other Kwa languages are spoken in countries like

i)Liberia

ii)Cote d’Ivoire

iii)Togo and

iv)Benin.

6)Adamawa East

Most the languages of the Adamawa East subgroup are spoken widely in three important countries and these includes

i)Cameroon

ii)The Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) and

iii)The Central African Republic.

7)Kordofanian

The last subgroup of the Niger- Congo family is the Kordofanian subgroup and it has fewer than 500,000 speakers and they are found especially in the Nuba mountains of Sudan. The important language under this sub divison is Moro and it has about 30,000 speakers

Afro -Asiatic Family

Features of Afro - Asiatic family

The languages belong to this Afro-Asiatic family is spoken by around 20 crores to 30 crores people in Africa.Usually the languages to Afro-Asiatic family shares many features and one shared feature is the emphatic consonant, i.e, the amount of stress which the speaker places on a consonant changes for  the meaning of certain words.

For example,let us consider the language of one of the subgroup of this family Hausa. In Hausa word "mana" literally means “for us,” whereas with an emphatic pronunciation of the consonant n in manna, it means “press against.”

Apart from this the languages in this family, also distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns.In the case of the feminine nouns, they typically have a final t. For example, in one of the language in this family , i.e,. in the language called Amharic, the word for man is "sew" and for woman is "set" and similary "ligu" means boy, and "ligitu" means girl.

Distribution

The main region where lots of people spek the languages belong to this family includes, the speakers from

i)Northern Africa

ii)Somalia

iii)Ethiopia

iv)Eritrea and

v)The area around Lake Chad in central Africa.

Subgroups

Usually when we look into this Afro - Asiatic languages, the  basic vocabulary which they use  reflects a pastoral life spent raising and herding livestock and also growing food crops.Under this Afro-Asiatic family , there is further divison and it is divided into five subgroups and these five subgroups usually contains more than 350 languages

The 5 subgroups of the Afro - Asiatic family includes

1)Chadic

2)Berber

3)Semitic

4)Cushitic and

5)Egyptian.

History goes wayback in years with respect to this family of languages, as the protolanguage of this family, which began to diverge into separate branches about 6000 years ago,and so it is called as ancestral Semitic.This family is also the protolanguage of other Semitic languages, which includes Arabic and Hebrew.Now let us disscuss each of this subgroup in detail.The image below shows the distribution of these sub groups in Africa

1)Chadic

#)This sub group consists of more that 100 languages

#)The number of speakers for this language is about 3 crores people

#)So naturally this language is considered as the most spoken language for this subgroup

#)This made this language as the most important language of this family.

#)Of this subgroup,the principal language is Hausa and it is also the most important language in the Afro-Asiatic family.

#)More than 2.2 crore of people speak Hausa and the consider this as their first language or some people consider this as  fluent second language

#)The people speaking Hausa are conined mainly in the region of Northern Nigeria and southern Niger.

#)Apart from these large number of speakers for Hausa,it also serves as the lingua franca,i.e, this is language which is used for trade and communication especially in  Western African countries like Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire, and also in some parts of Libya.

#)But historians believe that Hausa has borrowed many words from neighboring languages, such as Yoruba, Tuareg and also extensively from Arabic.

2)Berber

#)The number of speakers for this language is about 1.1 crores people and it is confiend mostly to Northern Africa

#)The most dominant language of this group,is Tamarshak (also spelled as Tamasheq),and it is spoken by the Tuareg people.

3)Semitic

#)Semitic languages includes languages like Amharic and Tigrinya

#)Their linguists trace back to Ge’ez,which is a type of language spoken mostly in northern Ethiopia more than 2000 years ago.

4)Cushitic

#)The principal languages includes Beja and Oromo

#)Beja language is spoken in Sudan and Eritrea

#)The languauge Oromo is mostly spoken in Ethiopia.

5)Egyptian

#)The history for this Egyptian subgroup of language goes back to 5000 years ago

#)But unfortunately historians believ thaese Egyptian language has not been spoken for about 600 years.

#)The last and final phase of this groups is the language called as as Coptic, remains alive as the liturgical language of the Coptic Church.

Nilo - Saharan family

The Nilo-Saharan languages are mostly tonal and some of the  Nilo-Saharan languages add both prefixes and suffixes to verbs while others add only suffixes.

However the Nilo-Saharan languages do not have a noun class agreement system like that of the Bantu languages of the Niger-Congo family.This Nilo-Saharan language family mainly covers the following regions

i)Most parts of Eastern Sahara

ii)The upper Nile Valley

iii)Areas around Lake Victoria in east central Africa and

iv)The Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Around 1.8 crores tp 3 crores of people speak the languages which comes under this Nilo - Saharan languauge family.This Nilo-Saharan language family is divided into six subgroups and these includes

1)Nilotic (or Chari-Nile)

2)Songhai

3)Saharan

4)Maban

5)Koman and

6)Fur.

The ancestral language tongue was spoken was more than 1000 years ago and it is mainly spoken by the people in the Sahara between Chad and the Nile.

1)Nilotic (or Chari-Nile)

Out of the above six subgroups, Nilotic language is spoken widely,and this language is spoken along the Nile and Chari rivers. Languages in this subgroup includes

i)Luo - spoken in Kenya

ii)Masai (or Maasai) - spoken in Kenya and Tanzania and

iii)Nubian - spoken along the Nile Valley in Sudan and Egypt

Apart from the above languages, other languages in this subgroup are spoken mainly in countries mentioned below

i)Chad

ii)Ethiopia

iii)Uganda

iv)The Democratic Republic of the Congo and

v)The Central African Republic.

2)Songhai

Next subgroup is the Songhai and it is spoken along the Niger River in Mali and Niger.

3)Saharan

The Saharan subgroup group comprises languages that includes

i)Kanuri - spoken in Nigeria

ii)Teda - spoken in central Sahara and

iii)Zaghawa - spoken in Chad and Sudan.

4)Maban

Maban subgroup is spoken in mainly in Chad

5)Koman

The languages which are spoken under the Koman subgroup and they are mainly spoken along the portion of the border between Ethiopia and Sudan.

6)Fur

The last subgroup is the Fur subgroup and it is another small subgroup which is spoken in the Darfur province of Sudan.

Khoi - San language family

In the Khoi - San language family, more than 12 languages are available and it is divided into two subgroups

i)South African Khoi -  San

ii)East African Khoi - San

Report says that there are around two lakhs to three lakhs people in Africa speak these languages.

Languages of South African Khoi - San:

The languages of South African Khoi - San includes

i)Nama

ii)Naron

These two type oflanguages are spoken mainly

i)In and around the Kalahari Desert of northern South Africa

ii)Southwestern Botswana

iii)Namibia

Languages of East African Khoi - San:

The languages of East African Khoisan mainly includes

i)Sandawe

ii)Hadza

These two type of languages are spokenmainly in Tanzania.

#)Many people were exposed to a Khoi - San language through the actor Nǃxau during the 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy.The image below shows some of the people who speak  Kho - Sian language