Arabic Arabic is the Semitic language used by more than 280 million people around the world. It kind of stuck… but three-quarters of the country’s population of >100M do not speak or understand Amharic to this day. It’s the official language of many countries in Africa, and spoken by over 100M people, mostly in West Africa. 3/31/2021 What’s the Most Spoken Language in Africa? In the 3 rd position of the top 6, the most spoken language in Africa is the French language. Try taking advantage of tools like SRS (Spaced Repetition Systems) to efficiently memorize each letter and its various combinations. And also in some other states hausa have 10-15percet. The Oromo language is the official working language of a few prominent regions in Ethiopia, including Harar and Dire Dawa. That’s why I’m not going to include Amharic or Zulu on this list because, although they have a lot of speakers, these languages are pretty much spoken in a single country. And “Jambo” isn’t one of them. The reason colonial languages have persisted is not just because it’s hard to shake a language (although it is). Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. The fact that Igbo is mostly spoken in Nigeria complicates learning Igbo. It’s hard to reach that level both because the language is hard and because there are fewer chances to use it. And everyone in Kenya learns Swahili in school and uses it as a lingua franca with Kenyans from other ethnic groups, so they also speak it well too. Remember that African countries hardly have a data base. Even I have Egyptian friends even they don’t know the name of the language. Our goal is to bring you closer to places and people that would otherwise seem foreign by providing guides to studying languages, understanding culture, and living in unfamiliar places. Egyptians don’t even think of Egyptian Arabic as a language — they think of it as an “accent” (لهجة, lahgah). Swahili is Tanzania’s official language, as well as the medium of instruction in all schools. In many African countries typically there are one or two (or up to eleven!) So which language should you learn to speak with the most people in Africa? This article is full of errors, get your facts straight. So Mr man get your facts straight before posting stupidity. Many educated people in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia speak fluent French (and often English). English is the most widely spoken language across the African continent, followed by French, Portuguese, and even Spanish. I won’t be surprised if this article was wrote by Nigerians, the Akan and Ewe is wildly spoken then igbo and youroba…. Yoruba is the language of the Yoruba people who mostly live in the unofficial area known as “Yorubaland”. 4. To say hello in French, one says “Bonjour”. What a nonsense! nc, gc ch and so on. Pronunciation of most Yoruba vowels and consonants is pretty easy, except for a few likely to trip you up, including gb, a combination of both consonants but with no aspiration, the similar p, and a nasal n. Amharic is the official language of Ethiopia, and the lingua franca of politics and commerce. The country is also home to more than 520 languages, but there are many more languages which are yet to be classified. Currently, more than ten million people use it as a second lingo. Are you kidding? Stanford University’s Arabic Department site, African Culture – 16 most interesting traditions, 10 trending Kaftan outfit ideas for grooms-to-be, 150 Unique and Most Common African Last Names (Surnames), Richest Person In Kenya And Top 10 Wealthy Kenyans, Turkey is to completely erase all Somalia’s debts to the IMF, 5 highest paid African football players in 2020, 10 of Africa’s most amazing Tourist places you must visit, The 10 Best Africans In The English Premier League, 16 Reasons Why You Should Visit South Africa For The Holidays, Botswana police ranked Africa’s best, Nigeria at bottom of global report, Isabel dos Santos only African on Forbes 2017 ‘100 most powerful women’. The second reason colonial languages persist in African countries is that colonial languages are less divisive internally. Lie’s hausa has about 200 hundreds million speaker’s,…. Colonial languages are often the cause of bad blood though — or at least associated with it. It is written in the Ge’ez or Ethiopic script, with over 30 different characters. Hausa, Yoruba, Oromo, Igbo, Amharic, Shona, Zulu, Arabic and French are other commonly spoken language all over the Africa. Chichewa is popular in Malawi with over 6 million speakers, and Spanish is also spoken in Equatorial Guinea by over 600,000 people. As far as Africa is concerned, Arabic is an official language in Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Libya, Eritrea… the list goes on! What’s more, I guarantee you already know a handful of Swahili words. Swahili is a Bantu language widely spoken in the African Great Lakes region, which comprises of a huge swath of Central, Southern and East African. Oromia was independent until the 1890s, when the Abyssinians (now Ethiopia) conquered them and suppressed Oromo culture. Everybody in Mali speaks Mandinka/Bambara, same for Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina-Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia etc. It is a tonal language with three tones: high, mid and low, and forms part of the Volta-Niger branch of the Niger-Congo family of languages. Some Amharic. Maghrebi (“Western”) Arabic, or ad-darijah (الدارجة‎) as it’s known locally, is a dialect continuum spoken mostly in North Africa, including in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Western Sahara, Libya, and Mauritania. It’s very similar to other Eastern Arabic variants, like those spoken in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. After 1991, the language adopted the Latin alphabet. Zulu and Xhosa are mostly mutually intelligible and share nearly all the same linguistic features, so let’s consider them together. this is stupid and probably political. Egypt (and immediate surrounds) is home to the Egyptian Arabic dialect, a variant of Eastern Arabic. Don’t jest copy from successionist OLF. It’s the second-largest Semitic language after Arabic and ahead of Hebrew. Number of native speakers: 150 million in Africa, 280 million worldwide While most speakers live in North Africa, estimates say that over 150 million people in Africa speak There are approximately 14 million people who use Portuguese as their mother tongue on the continent, and over 30 million secondary speakers. Cameron. It is also Kenya’s official language as well as Uganda. 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. However, this is not the form of Arabic that native speakers always learn as children. They’ll say they don’t know Arabic well… while talking to you in what, from your perspective, is Arabic! Interesting, Arabic has more countries which speaks it than Kiswahil. I’m called lao-wai in China. For us language enthusiasts, that means more languages than you can count. It falls under the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Further, in professional settings in North Africa, if they have to use just one language, many people from the region will prefer French and claim their “Arabic” is not good enough (again, referring to MSA, just like in Egypt). My advice in summary is that anyone with a grouse against any part or all of the write-up should produce, for public consumptio, a better and more acceptable piece instead. These languages can be classified into two main language families: the Afro-Asiatic language family and the Niger-Congo language family. What are the top 10 languages spoken in Africa? Oromia was home to many pioneering human achievements, including pebble tools (circa 7,000 BC), domestication of animals (5000 BC), and the invention of their own indigenous democratic system. I think things for Africa leave them to the hands of African. Nonetheless, it’s possible if the speakers speak slowly. Language enthusiast my arse. How they could be in this position, by the way they have capacity stilling some other culture and every heritage that why they was on this position with fake information. Bantu languages are most common around Southern and Eastern Africa. Swahili . apparently Shona has more native speakers than Zulu, yet Zulu is 7th and Shona 8th on your list? Swahili is the most spoken language in Africa, with over 100 million speakers. All you spoke about Oromigna language is false, It has been spoken before 1974 but they used Geez alphabet, which is Erhiopian font. The Oromo language is also is not mutually intelligible as there are different dialects. Thanks for you info. Learn some phrases and basic vocab at Amharic Teacher, and listen to Australia’s SBS Amharic stream here. In fact, the Oromo are the largest single people in East Africa, and one of the largest in all of Africa. 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