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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.
The following languages are listed as having at least 50 million first-language speakers in the 27th edition of Ethnologue published in 2024. [7] This section does not include entries that Ethnologue identifies as macrolanguages encompassing all their respective varieties , such as Arabic , Lahnda , Persian , Malay , Pashto , and Chinese .
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [1] ... South Africa: 30 12 42 0.59 51,004,892 1,416,803
Within Africa, Oromo is the language with the fourth most speakers, after Arabic (if one counts the mutually unintelligible spoken forms of Arabic as a single language and assumes the same for the varieties of Oromo), Swahili, and Hausa. Besides first language speakers, a number of members of other ethnicities who are in contact with the Oromo ...
Most spoken languages, Ethnologue, 2024 [4] Language Family Branch First-language (L1) speakers Second-language (L2) speakers Total speakers (L1+L2) English (excl. creole languages) Indo-European: Germanic: 380 million 1.135 billion 1.515 billion Mandarin Chinese (incl. Standard Chinese, but excl. other varieties) Sino-Tibetan: Sinitic: 941 ...
[55] [54] Arabic, spoken in both Asia and Africa, is by far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language today, [4] with around 300 million native speakers, while the Ethiopian Amharic language has around 25 million; collectively, Semitic is the largest branch of Afroasiatic by number of current speakers. [7]
There are over 520 native languages spoken in Nigeria. [1] [2] [3] The official language is English, [4] [5] which was the language of Colonial Nigeria.The English-based creole Nigerian Pidgin – first used by the British and African slavers to facilitate the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th century [6] – is the most common lingua franca, spoken by over 60 million people.
Of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, 91 are living and 1 is extinct. 41 of the living languages are institutional, 14 are developing, 18 are vigorous, 8 are in danger of extinction, and 5 are near extinction. [5] According to data from 2021 from Ethnologue, [6] the largest first languages are: Oromo speakers numbering more than 36 million ...