Languages Of Africa

Juli 30, 2021 Posting Komentar

The most commonly spoken languages in Africa are highlighted below. Sepedi also known as Sesotho sa Leboa Sesotho Setswana siSwati Tshivenda Xitsonga Afrikaans English isiNdebele isiXhosa and isiZulu.

Major Languages Of Africa Africa Map Language Map Languages Of Africa

This rise and fall of pitch is characteristic of West African languages with some non-tonal language exceptions like Fula.

Languages of africa. Many languages in Africa are part of this group which encompasses around 375 languages in total. Several African languages are whistled to communicate over long distances. The most widely spoken languages of Africa Swahili 100 million Yoruba 20 million Igbo 21 million and Fula 13 million all belong to the Niger-Congo family.

So prosodic are the primarily tonal languages of West Africa that most speech reverberates far able to be beautifully mimicked rhythmically reproduced and literally banged out through the elaborate talking drum motifs inherent to this region of the world. Sandawe Ushi or Igbo has distinctive linguistic features that makes it belong to only one particular language family in the world. Map 1 found below has listed up to three of the most widely spoken languages in each African country.

Niger-Congo languages Afroasiatic languages and Khoisan languages. South Africas Constitution recognises 11 official languages. Learn more about the Niger-Congo language family on Ethnologue.

Official languages in Africa Afrikaans Arabic English French Portuguese Spanish Swahili other African languages Note on South Africa References South Africa has 11 national languages. Africas language make-up is complex. By the number of native speakers or by overall numbers including L2 speakers.

Afrikaans Ndebele Xhosa Zulu Pedi Sotho Tswana Swazi Venda and Tsonga. Together they have approximately 300 million speakers. No matter how the major language families are organized there are many smaller families and language isolates.

Because many Africans are at least bilingual there are two possible ways to determine the most spoken African languages. For centuries South Africas official languages were European Dutch English Afrikaans. In Africa Swahili also known as Kiswahili is the official language of Tanzania and Kenya and also spoken by countries such as Uganda Rwanda and Burundi amongst others.

Arabic speakers in Africa account for 62 of the total Arabic speakers in the world. African languages are grouped into four language families notably Niger-Kordofanian family. If you think back to Module 5 you will remember that these are only a few of the over 1000 languages spoken in Africa.

The Most Commonly Spoken Languages Arabic. Africa also has some sign. Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by 150 million people in Africa making it the most widely spoken language on the continent.

African languages are composed of many dialects including sign languages and languages with clicks or other tones that are unique to the continent. Languages spoken in Africa can be grouped into Afro-Asiatic Nilo-Saharan Niger-Congo and Khoisan. Afroasiatic languages are spoken across North Africa and Southwest Asia.

One of its sub-family Chadic has Hausa as a language while Semitic sub-family has Arabic. In addition there are some obscure rare uncommon languages that are not yet classified into any family. The most spoken African languages by number of native speakers.

About a hundred of the languages of Africa are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Ewe and Mina the two major African languages in the south Kabye Kabiye and Dagomba the two major African languages in the north Tunisia Arabic and the languages of commerce. These linguists organize the African languages into only three language families.

Swahili is popularly used as a second language by people across the African continent and taught in schools and universities. For example Nigeria alone contains 250 different languages. Yepwhatever language you speak be it English Xhosa or Lunda.

Some of the most spoken African languages in this group include Arabic Amharic Somali Oromo Tamazight and Hausa. Individual languages such as Berber Arabic Igbo Swahili Hausa Amharic and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people.

Major Languages In Africa Language Xhosa Swahili