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Almost all South Africans speak English to some degree of proficiency, in addition to their native language, with English acting as a lingua franca in commerce, education, and government. [1] [2] South Africa has twelve official languages, but other indigenous languages are spoken by smaller groups, chiefly Khoisan languages. [3]
San family in South Africa. Within the Coloured community, more recent immigrants will also be found i.e. Coloureds from the former Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); Namibia and immigrants of mixed descent from India (such as Anglo-Indians) who were welcomed to the Cape when India and Burma received their Independence. [22]
Due to English being an official language of South Africa, dialects that have contrary methods in language and pronunciation to English become isolated from the speech in that area. For instance, "it lacks the tense/lax contrast and central vowels in the mesolectal variety."
Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. [120]
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.
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa.Its nine provinces are bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 miles) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean; [14] [15] [16] to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini ...
Zulu (/ ˈ z uː l uː / ZOO-loo), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken and indigenous to Southern Africa.It is the language of the Zulu people, with about 13.56 million native speakers, who primarily inhabit the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. [3]
The history of the Ndebele people begin with the Bantu Migrations southwards from the Great Lakes region of East Africa. Bantu speaking peoples moved across the Limpopo river into modern day South Africa and over time assimilated and conquered the indigenous San people in the North Eastern regions of South Africa.