african

«african» in Mova's school dictionary: from, of or about Africa, the second-largest continent — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

adjective (African); noun (an African, Africans)

meaning for a pupil

1) African means from, of or about Africa, the second-largest continent. tree →

2) An African is a person from Africa or whose family comes from Africa. tree →

3) African is also used in the names of animals and plants that live in Africa, like the African elephant. tree →

sense in the lessons

In geography lessons pupils learn that Africa has more than fifty countries and many hundreds of languages, the Sahara desert, the Nile river and rainforests, so «African» covers a huge variety of people, foods, music and ways of life. In science «African» appears in animal names: «African elephant», «African wild dog», «African grey parrot». In history lessons «African» comes in the history of ancient kingdoms (Egypt, Mali, Benin) and the slave trade. Phrases: «African American», «South African», «North African».

examples

• The African elephant is the largest land animal. tree →
• Our school celebrated African music with a drumming workshop. tree →
• Nigeria and Kenya are both African countries. tree →
• Her grandparents are African, from Ghana. tree →
• The African savanna has lions, zebras and giraffes. tree →
• We read a traditional African folk tale about Anansi the spider. tree →
• Many African languages are spoken across the continent. tree →
• The African grey parrot is very good at copying words. tree →
• The African magician had a younger brother, who was, if possible, more wicked and more cunning than himself. tree →

note

Always a capital A, because it comes from a place name. Africa is a continent, not a country, so «African» is not one language or one culture — say «Nigerian», «Kenyan», «Egyptian» when you mean one country. «African American» is a person in the USA with African family roots. Be respectful: use it about people as a description, not as a label for a whole group.

In the corpora

• Elephant ears are full of blood vessels, and flapping them cools the blood; African elephants have much bigger ears than Asian elephants.
• The African forest buffalo is a smaller, reddish cousin of the savanna buffalo, with swept-back horns that fit dense forest.
• African pygmy kingfishers are tiny kingfishers that mostly hunt insects in woods, not fish in rivers.
• Tenrecs look like hedgehogs or shrews but are actually related to elephants and aardvarks, African animals that dig for ants.
• The American and the African and Asian porcupines are only distant relatives, and many scientists think they grew quills separately.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «african» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.