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After gaining independence, many African countries, in the search for national unity, selected one language, generally the former Indo-European colonial language, to be used in government and education. However, in recent years, African countries have become increasingly supportive of maintaining linguistic diversity.
The official population count of the various ethnic groups in Africa is highly uncertain due to limited infrastructure to perform censuses, and due to rapid population growth. Some groups have alleged that there is deliberate misreporting in order to give selected ethnicities numerical superiority (as in the case of Nigeria's Hausa, Fulani ...
The Polyglotta Africana was the second work carried out by Koelle during his five years in Sierra Leone, the first being a grammar of the Vai language in 1849. [3] The idea of this was to use the fact that Sierra Leone was a melting pot of ex-slaves from all over Africa to compile a list of 280 basic words (a sort of early Swadesh list) in some 160 languages and dialects.
Swahili has become a second language spoken by tens of millions of people in the five African Great Lakes countries (Kenya, DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania), where it is an official or national language. It is also the first language for many people in Tanzania, especially in the coastal regions of Tanga, Pwani, Dar es Salaam, Mtwara and Lindi.
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
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.
There are eight dialects, including the two written standards Kwanyama and Ndonga. Oshiwambo culture is more dominant in the northern part of the country. The following table contains the names, areas, dialect names and the locations of the Ovambo dialects according to T. E. Tirronen's Ndonga-English Dictionary.