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Hombert & Philippson (2009) [19] list a number of African languages that have been classified as language isolates at one point or another. Many of these are simply unclassified, but Hombert & Philippson believe Africa has about twenty language families, including isolates. Beside the possibilities listed above, there are:
Polyglotta Africana is a study published in 1854 by the German missionary Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle (1823–1902), in which the author compares 280 words from 200 African languages and dialects (or about 120 separate languages according to today's classification; several varieties considered distinct by Koelle were later shown to belong to the same language).
Dialects can be defined as "sub-forms of languages which are, in general, mutually comprehensible." [1] English speakers from different countries and regions use a variety of different accents (systems of pronunciation) as well as various localized words and grammatical constructions. Many different dialects can be identified based on these ...
Swahili is the most widespread lingua franca in East Africa. [21] In Congo, the local dialect of Swahili is known as Congo Swahili and differs considerably from Standard Swahili. [22] Many variations of Congo Swahili are spoken in the country but the major one is Kingwana, sometimes called Copperbelt Swahili, especially in the Katanga area.
Amharic was the language of primary school instruction, but has been replaced in many areas by regional languages such as Oromo, Somali or Tigrinya. [16] While all languages enjoy equal state recognition in the 1995 Constitution of Ethiopia [ 17 ] and Oromo is the most populous language by native speakers, Amharic is the most populous by number ...
Many Bantu languages borrow words from each other, and some are mutually intelligible. [4] Some of the languages are spoken by a very small number of people, for example the Kabwa language was estimated in 2007 to be spoken by only 8500 people but was assessed to be a distinct language.
Akan, part of the Kwa branch of the Niger–Congo family, is a dialect continuum, [15] but with regard to official status, only a few out of the many varieties of Akan are recognised: Fante, Asante Twi, Akuapem Twi. Taken as a whole, Akan is the most-widely spoken language in Ghana. [10]
Nubian (1.7 million, all dialects). The language of Nubia, extending today from southern Egypt into northern Sudan. Many Nubians have also migrated northwards to Cairo since the building of the Aswan Dam. Lugbara (1.7 million, 2.2 if Aringa (Low Lugbara) is included). The major Central Sudanic language; Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the ...