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Multilingualism  and  Nation  Building: Language  an d Education  in  Eritrea Chefena  Hailemariam Department of English, University of Asmara, PO Box 122 0, Asmara, Eritrea Sjaak  Kroon Babylon, Center for Stud ies of Multilingualism in th e Multicultural Society, Faculty of Arts, Tilburg University, PO Box 9015 3, 5000 LE Tilburg, Th e Netherlands Joel  Walters Department of English, Language Policy R esearch Center, B ar-Ilan University , Ramat Gan, Israel Th is paper focuses on language choice inthe newestnatio n in theHornofAfricawithin a broader context of language policy in multilingual states. Pre-colonial and po st-coloni al langu age po licie s in Eri treaare survey ed in relat ion to evolving linguist ic and polit ical nat ion alism. Lan guage contactand its soc ial consequences are di scus sed in anattempt to shed lig ht on langua ge po lic iespursued during di fferent pe rio ds in the colonial history of Eritrea. Using descriptive frameworks provided by contemporary sociolingu istics, post-indepe ndence langua ge policy, with language and education at the centre, islooked atfro m the perspective of thefunctional allocationof ni neEritrean languages and the points at which they conflict and complement each other. Public responses and evaluations are analysed and implications for further research are advanced. Language  and  Nation  in  Africa When geography, political borders, religion, ethnicity and language all c oin- ci de, there is ge ner all y very li ttle confl ict over l ang uage pol ic y, and the minorit y gr oups whose polit ical aspirati ons and language pr acti ces di ff er from the mono- lingual majority often find very little room to make a claim for plurilingualism. When, however, ca tegor ies such as ge ography, ethnici ty, and rel igion cut across language andlitera cy, the pot ent ial forcontrove rsy andeven conflict mu lti pl ies. If we add to this a long history of war and colonialism, we begin to get some insig ht into the comple xity of the lan guagesitua tion in Eritre a,one of the world ’s most recently independent nations. Central highlanders are predominantly Christi an and speakers of Ti grig na, the samename ser ving asthe ir et hni city .But there are also Tigrigna who live outside the central highlands as non-natives of those areas, or who practice Islam and who speak Tigre or o ne or another of Eritrea’s nine major languages. By the same token, there ar e Tigre, for the most part Moslems who live in the lowlands and make up Eritrea’s second largest et hno linguistic gr oup, who speak Tigr ig naorare bili ng ual inTigr e and Tigr igna and practice one o f three major varie ties of Chri stianity in Eritrea. While the Tigrigna and Tigre account for approximately eighty% of the population of Eritrea, there are seven other g roups whose geograph ic, polit ical, re ligious, and

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