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How many people speak Somali language?
What languages do Somalis speak?
Is Somali a Arabic language?
What is the official language of Somalia?
With 17.3 million speakers and a population share of 98%, it is by far the most important language in Somalia. It is also the official language here. The language is used as a mother tongue by around 25.8 million people in the countries around the Horn of Africa.
Interactive map showing the number of speakers and geographic spread of different languages in Somalia. Data is from the 2021 JMCNA.
- Where Is The Somali Language spoken?
- How Old Is The Somali Language?
- How Many People Speak The Somali Language?
- Where to Buy A Complete Somali Language Course
- Is Somali Hard to Learn?
- Is Somali Different to Arabic (Arabic vs Somali)?
- What Language Is Mutually Intelligible to Somali?
- What Are The Best Books to Learn Somali?
- How Many Somali Dialects Are there?
The Somali language is spoken in the Horn of Africa, which comprises of Somalia (where it is the national language), as well as Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Djibouti.
The Somali language has only officially existed since the early 1900's, but being from the Cushitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages, it has developed over thousands of years to its current form.
Recent surveys suggest that there are over 8.3 million Somali speakers inSomalia, and over 16 million Somali speakers worldwide.
At present, the only decent and reputable Somali language course (online) is the Cudoo Somali Course. It's priced at $12.99 and covers the essentials of the Somali language for beginner learners (see the course here- once you visit the link, type in 'Somali').
Somali's difficulty is entirely subjective and dependent upon your motivation, background and experience learning languages. The Foreign Service Institutde (FSI) places Somali in Category 2 for difficulty, with Category 3 being the most difficult.
Arabic is a Semitic language, whereas Somali is a Cushitic language, so the two languages are from different families. However, given their close proximity to each other, Somali has been heavily influenced by Arabic, and Islam has had a tremendous impact on the language's development.
There are no mutually intelligible languages to Somali. Afar, Saho and Oromo are the closest languages to Somali, but a Somali cannot converse with speakers of these languages.
The best book to learn Somali is without doubt, Learn Somali by Baro Af Soomaali. Another excellent book for learning Somali is Learn Somali in Context: Examples from Internet Media by H. J. Goforth.
There are 3 main dialects of Somali: 1) Northern Somali 2) Benaadir (coastal Somali) and 3) Af-Ashraaf
Jun 17, 2020 · The next most spoken languages are Hausa (Chadic) with 40 million speakers, Oromo (Cushitic) with 34 million, Amharic (Semitic) with 25 million, and Somali (Cushitic) with 17 million. All of the Berber languages together make up about 15 million speakers. The Omotic branch brings up the rear with just over 6 million.
This channel is to help inspire and educate somalis around the global. We seek to do this through discussions, conversations and debates on the cultural, social, economic, political and historical ...
Somali. The Somali language is spoken in North Eastern Kenya by over 2.5 million people. It is the primary language of Somalia and Somaliland, a national language in Djibuti and is equally spoken in certain regions in Ethiopia and there exists a big diaspora of Somalis in Europe and the Americas.
There are about 16 million native Somali speakers worldwide. 7 out of 16 million Somali speakers live in Somalia. It is worth to mention, that Somali is not the only official language to Somalia. The second official language of the country is Arabic. Also, thanks to the colonial history of the country, many people also speak English and Italian.
