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Clickable map showing the traditional language families, subfamilies and major languages spoken in Africa. Most languages natively spoken in Africa belong to one of the two large language families that dominate the continent: Afroasiatic, or Niger–Congo.
List of official, national and spoken languages of Africa. Africa is a continent with a very high linguistic diversity, there are an estimated 1500-2000 African languages. gathering appoximately 140 languages with some eleven millions speakers scattered in Central and Eastern Africa.
- English
- Arabic
- French
- Swahili
- Hausa
- Amharic
- Yoruba
- Fula / Fulfude
- Oromo
- Zulu
Speakers: Over 250 million Over 237 million people in Africaspeak English in total (including native and non-native speakers). The greatest number of English speakers are in Nigeria, where there are about 111 million people who speak at least some of the language. In Africa, 27 out of 54 countries on the continent speak the English language as thei...
Speakers: Over 170 million Arabic is the most widespread official language in the Africancontinent and the second most spoken language in Africa. It is the official language of Algeria, Mauritania, Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. Arabic is the co-official language of Morocco, Eritrea, Somalia, Chad, Sudan, Djibouti and Western Sahara. According to wikipe...
Speakers: Over 120 million Like English, French is one of the most popular language in Africa. Many countries in Africa were colonized by France, because of this, there are over 120 million French speakers who use the language as their mother tongue or secondary language. The highest percentage of people who speak French are from Gabon, Mauritius, ...
Speakers: Over 100 million Swahili is the most spoken native language in East Africa. With over 100 million speakers (of the 1 billion Africans, About 10 percent speak Swahili), this ancient language is the fourth most popular language in Africa. The Swahili is a Bantu language believed to have originated from other languages, mainly Arabic, due to...
Speakers: Over 75 million Hausa is one of Nigeria’s official languages and it’s the fifth most spoken language in Africa and the most spoken local language in western Africa. The Hausa language has more first-language speakers than any other language in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to wikipedia, the Hausa language has an estimated 25 million first...
Speakers: Over 57 million Amharic is the sixth most popular language in Africa and serves as the working language of Ethiopia. It’s also the working language of several of the states within the Ethiopian federal system. With 31,800,000 mother-tongue speakers as of 2018, plus another 25,100,000 second language speakers, Amharic is the second most co...
Speakers: Over 50 million Yoruba is one of West Africa’s most spoken languages, and also one of Nigeria’s official languages. The Yoruba language is the seventh most commonly spoken language in Africa and itnaccounts for over 50 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
Speakers: Over 40 million Fula is a Senegambian language spoken by more than 40 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 20 countries in West and Central Africa it’s also the eighth most popular language in Africa. Fulfulde is an official language in Senegal (Pulaar), an official lingua franca in Guinea,...
Speakers: over 37 million The Oromo people are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, estimated to be over 37 million people in 2018. The language which is used as a lingua franca particularly in Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya is the ninth most popular language in Africa.
Speakers: over 28 million The Zulu peopleare the largest ethnic group and nation in South Africa with an estimated 10–12 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The language of the Zulu people is “isiZulu”, a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup. Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa...
May 19, 2023 · Most spoken African languages: discover the top languages across the continent. With over 2,000 distinct languages, Africa is nothing short of linguistic diversity. However, some languages dominate the African scene. The 10 most spoken languages in Africa are: Arabic – 150 million speakers; Swahili – 50 million speakers; Hausa – 49 ...
- 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.
Nov 23, 2023 · 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.
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Jan 31, 2023 · Language scholars classify the languages of Africa into six different families, or phyla: the Niger-Congo languages, the Afroasiatic languages, the Nilo-Saharan languages, the Khoisan languages, the Austronesian languages, and the Indo-European languages.
