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At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal in legal status.
The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, [1] and by some counts at over 3,000. [2] Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue ), [ 3 ] one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world.
Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. [5] It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994. [6] According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili.
Afrikaans is an official language of the Republic of South Africa and a recognised national language of the Republic of Namibia. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by the government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and radio), and general status throughout the country, given that ...
This is the list of countries sorted by the number of official languages. Only countries with three or more official languages, either nationally or locally, are included. Country. Official. Including minority. Ref. Bolivia. 37. 37.
Number of living languages Number of speakers Established Immigrant Total Percent [note 1] Total Mean Median 1 Papua New Guinea: 840 0 840 11.81 4,213,381 5,040 1,315 2 Indonesia: 707 2 709 9.98 222,191,197 315,165 3,500 3 Nigeria: 525 7 524 7.37 163,317,444 348,225 14,000 4 India: 453 6 459 1,257,421,714 2,924,237 35,000 5 China (mainland only)
Today, Afrikaans is recognised as one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and is the third most common first language in South Africa. In June 2013, the Department of Basic Education included Afrikaans as an African language to be compulsory for all pupils.
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect . For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties , and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.