In this chapter, I provide a historical and linguistic account of the ways in which French was introduced and spread to some parts of the African continent and then diversified along a basilect-to-acrolect continuum. I show the different communicative functions it plays in the new ecologies where it evolved. In environments where major African languages are used as vehicular languages, French enjoys limited communicative functions, mainly restricted to formal interactions such as in school, public administration, and government. Conversely, in ecologies where no indigenous lingua franca had emerged, it is used in daily interactions to communicate across ethnolinguistic groups. I then address the questions of why schooling hasn’t contributed to the spread of French in the post-colonial era despite the significant increase of the school population and why it has not speciated into different regional varieties drastically different from those of the former metropoles (viz., France and Belgium). Finally, I present contrastive examples of Camfranglais/Francanglais (Cameroun) and Nouchi (Côte d’Ivoire) and argue that the latter may be the only variety that has speciated into a new one very different from that of France.

This chapter surveys the historical background of the global spread of English and its linguistic consequences. Since World Englishes are mostly products of colonialism, it surveys the history of European colonization and colonization types, the growth and decline of the British Empire, and the role of the United States in the globalization of English. It discusses the tension between the internationalization and the localization of English, the range of variety types which have consequently grown in specific circumstances; and offers numbers of varieties and speakers involved, including a global map of countries in which English has some sort of a special internal status. It is shown that, surprisingly, the global growth of English gained even more momentum after the end of the colonial period. The constant leitmotif in all of this is the relationship between the language-external and the internal, the direct functional relationship between historical events and constellations, the communicative patterns caused by these, and, consequently, their effects upon the development of linguistic forms and varieties.