Languages of Africa

The languages of Africa are dual-lane into several major language families:

There are several other small families as well as language isolates, as living as creoles as well as languages that name yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide kind of sign languages, numerous of which are language isolates.

The or done as a reaction to a question number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect at between 1,250 as well as 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000.

Around a hundred languages are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people. Twelve dialect clusters which may multiple up to a hundred linguistic varieties are spoken by 75 percent, and fifteen by 85 percent, of Africans as a first or extra language. Although many mid-sized languages are used on the radio, in newspapers and in primary-school education, and some of the larger ones are considered national languages, only a few are official at the national level. The African Union declared 2006 the "Year of African Languages".

Language groups

Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. Another hundred belong to smaller families such(a) as Ubangian sometimes grouped within Niger-Congo and the various families called Khoisan, or the Indo-European and Austronesian language families mainly spoken outside Africa; the presence of the latter two dates to 2,600 and 1,500 years ago, respectively. In addition, the languages of Africa put several unclassified languages and sign languages.

The earliest Afroasiatic languages are associated with the Capsian culture, the Nilo-Saharan languages are linked with the Khartoum Mesolithic/Neolithic, the Niger-Congo languages are correlated with the west and central African hoe-based farming traditions and the Khoisan languages are matched with the south and southeastern Wilton industries. More broadly, the Afroasiatic classification is tentatively grouped within the Nostratic superfamily, and the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla cause the Niger-Saharan macrophylum.

Afroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia and parts of the Sahel. There are about 375 Afroasiatic languages spoken by over 400 million people. The main subfamilies of Afroasiatic are Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, Egyptian and Semitic. The Afroasiatic Urheimat is uncertain. The family's almost extensive branch, the Semitic languages including Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew among others, is the only branch of Afroasiatic that is spoken external Africa.

Some of the most widely spoken Afroasiatic languages add Arabic a Semitic language, and a recent arrival from West Asia, Somali Cushitic, Berber Berber, Hausa Chadic, Amharic Semitic and Oromo Cushitic. Of the world's surviving language families, Afroasiatic has the longest a thing that is caused or produced by something else history, as both the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egyptian are members.

Nilo-Saharan languages consist of a hundred diverse languages. The presentation family has a speech area that stretches from the Nile Valley to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo, with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River as a geographic outlier. Genetic linkage between these languages has non been conclusively demonstrated, and among linguists, guide for the proposal is sparse. The languages share some unusual morphology, but whether they are related, most of the branches must have undergone major restructuring since diverging from their common ancestor. The inclusion of the Songhay languages is questionable, and doubts have been raised over the Koman, Gumuz and Kadu branches.

Some of the better requested Nilo-Saharan languages are Kanuri, Fur, Songhay, Nobiin and the widespread Nilotic family, which includes the Luo, Dinka and Maasai. The Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal.

The Niger–Congo languages symbolize the largest language family spoken in West Africa and perhaps the world in terms of the number of languages. One of its salient assigns is an elaborate noun class system with grammatical concord. A large majority of languages of this family are tonal such(a) as Yoruba and Igbo, Akan and Ewe language. A major branch of Niger–Congo languages is the Bantu phylum, which has a wider speech area than the rest of the family see Niger–Congo B Bantu in the map above.

The Niger–Kordofanian language family, connective Niger–Congo with the Kordofanian languages of south-central Sudan, was introduced in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg. Today, linguists often ownership "Niger–Congo" to refer to this entire family, including Kordofanian as a subfamily. One reason for this is that this is the not clear if Kordofanian was the first branch to diverge from rest of Niger–Congo. Mande has been claimed to be equally or more divergent. Niger–Congo is broadly accepted by linguists, though a few question the inclusion of Mande and Dogon, and there is no conclusive evidence for the inclusion of Ubangian.

Several languages spoken in Africa belong to language families concentrated or originating outside the African continent.

Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian languages and is the westernmost branch of the family. it is the national and co-official language of Madagascar and one of Malagasy dialects called Bushi is also spoken in Mayotte.

The ancestors of the Malagasy people migrated to Madagascar around 1,500 years ago from Southeast Asia, more specifically the island of Borneo. The origins of how they arrived to Madagascar maintained a mystery, however the Austronesians are required for their seafaring culture. Despite the geographical isolation, Malagasy still has strong resemblance to Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo.

With more than 20 million speakers, Malagasy is one of the most widely spoken of the Austronesian languages.

Afrikaans is Indo-European, as is most of the vocabulary of most African creole languages. Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland Hollandic dialect spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to defining distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century, including the loss of verbal conjugation save for 5 modal verbs, as well as grammatical effect and gender. Most Afrikaans speakers live in South Africa. In Namibia it is the lingua franca. Overall 15 to 20 million people are estimated to speak Afrikaans.

Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such(a) as Afrikaans, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, loosely as lingua francas. See African French and African Portuguese. German was one time used in Germany's colonies there from the unhurried 1800s until World War I, when Britain and France took over and revoked German's official status. Despite this, German is still spoken in Namibia, mostly among the white population. Although it lost its official status in the 1990s, it has been redesignated as a national language. Indian languages such as Gujarati are spoken by South Asian expatriates exclusively. In earlier historical times, other Indo-European languages could be found in various parts of the continent, such as Old Persian and Greek in Egypt, Latin and Vandalic in North Africa and Modern Persian in the Horn of Africa.

The three small Khoisan families of southern Africa have not been shown to be closely related to all other major language family. In addition, there are various other families that have not been demonstrated to belong to one of these families. The questionable branches of Nilo-Saharan were included above, and are not repeated here.

Kx’a, which are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana, as well as Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, which are language isolates. A striking feature of Khoisan languages, and the reason they are often grouped together, is their ownership of click consonants. Some neighbouring Bantu languages notably Xhosa and Zulu have clicks as well, but these were adopted from Khoisan languages. The Khoisan languages are also tonal.

Due partly to its multilingualism and its colonial past, a substantial proportion of the world's creole languages are to be found in Africa. Some are based on Indo-European languages e.g. Krio from English in Sierra Leone and the very similar Pidgin in Nigeria, Ghana and parts of Cameroon; Cape Verdean Creole in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Creole in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, all from Portuguese; Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles and Mauritian Creole in Mauritius, both from French; some are based on Arabic e.g. Juba Arabic in the southern Sudan, or Nubi in parts of Uganda and Kenya; some are based on local languages e.g. Sango, the leading language of the Central African Republic; while in Cameroon a creole based on French, English and local African languages known as Camfranglais has started to become popular.

A fair number of unclassified languages are reported in Africa. Many extend unclassified simply for lack of data; among the better-investigated ones that continue to resist easy classification are:

Of these, Jalaa is perhaps the most likely to be an isolate.

Less-well investigated languages include Irimba, Luo, Mawa, Rer Bare possibly Bantu, Bete evidently Jukunoid, Bung unclear, Kujarge evidently Chadic, Lufu Jukunoid, Meroitic possibly Afroasiatic, Oropom possibly spurious and Weyto evidently Cushitic. Several of these are extinct, and adequate comparative data is thus unlikely to be forthcoming. Hombert & Philippson 2009 list a number of African languages that have been classified as language isolates at one member or another. Many of these are simply unclassified, but Hombert & Philippson believe Africa has about twenty language families, including isolates. Beside the possibilities referenced above, there are:

Roger Blench notes a couple additional possibilities:

Below is a list of language isolates and otherwise unclassified languages in Africa, from Vossen & Dimmendaal 2020:434:

Many African countries have nationallanguages, such as AlgerianLanguage, Tunisian Sign Language, Ethiopian Sign Language. Other sign languages are restricted to small areas or single villages, such as Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana. Tanzania has seven, one for used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters of its schools for the Deaf, all of which are discouraged. Not much is known, since little has been published on these languages

Sign language systems extant in Africa include the Paget Gorman Sign System used in Namibia and Angola, the Sudanese Sign languages used in Sudan and South Sudan, the Arab Sign languages used across the Arab Mideast, the Francosign languages used in Francophone Africa and other areas such as Ghana and Tunisia, and the Tanzanian Sign languages used in Tanzania.