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  1. Jun 4, 2022 · In Africa, 27 out of 54 countries on the continent speak the English language as their official or secondary language making it the most popular language in Africa. English is the primary language of Botswana, Cameroon, Rwanda, Nigeria, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana.

  2. Most languages natively spoken in Africa belong to one of the two large language families that dominate the continent: Afroasiatic, or Niger–Congo. Another hundred belong to smaller families such as Ubangian , Nilotic , Saharan , and the various families previously grouped under the umbrella term Khoisan .

  3. Apr 22, 2024 · Africa is a linguistic wonderland, with over 3,000 languages spoken on the continent. Read this post to learn about the top 50 languages in Africa, all with example phrases, speaker numbers and geographical areas. You'll learn about languages as diverse as Arabic, Berber, Oromo and Swahili.

    • SWAHILI. Swahili is the most spoken language in Africa, with over 100 million speakers. It is a Bantu language believed to have originated from other languages, mainly Arabic, due to historical interactions between Arabs from the Middle East and East Africans.
    • AMHARIC. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia and is the second most spoken language in the country after Oromo, with over 21 million speakers.
    • YORUBA. Yoruba is one of West Africa’s most spoken languages, accounting for over 30 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and it is one of Nigeria’s official languages.
    • OROMO. Oromo is spoken by over 30 million people in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Egypt. The Oromo people account for more than 40% of the Ethiopian population, and are the largest ethnic group in the country.
    • The origins. The historical lands of the Swahili are on East Africa’s Indian Ocean littoral. A 2,500-kilometer chain of coastal towns from Mogadishu, Somalia to Sofala, Mozambique as well as offshore islands as far away as the Comoros and Seychelles.
    • African unity. The roll of Swahili enthusiasts and advocates includes notable intellectuals, freedom fighters, civil rights activists, political leaders, scholarly professional societies, entertainers and health workers.
    • A liberation language. During the decades leading up to the independence of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania in the early 1960s, Swahili functioned as an international means of political collaboration.
    • Socialist overtones. Nyerere even made the term Swahili a referent to Tanzanian citizenship. Later, this label acquired socialist overtones in praising the common men and women of the nation.
  4. Jul 30, 2018 · Arabic is a Semitic language spoken by 150 million people in Africa, making it the most widely spoken language on the continent. Arabic speakers in Africa account for 62% of the total Arabic speakers in the world.

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  6. Learn about the diversity and classification of African languages, with an emphasis on the four major families: Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan. Find out the most widely spoken languages in Africa and how to choose a language to study.

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