The traditional language families spoken in Africa:
Bantu
The languages of Africa are divided into five major language families:
- Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel.
- Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar.
- Indo-European languages are spoken in South Africa and Namibia (Afrikaans, English, German) and are used as lingua francas in the former colonies of Britain and Liberia that was part of American Colonization Society (English), former colonies of France and of Belgium (French), former colonies of Portugal, former colonies of Italy (Italian), former colonies of Spain (Spanish) and the current Spanish territories of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands (Spanish).
- Niger–Congo languages (Bantu and non-Bantu) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern Africa.
- Nilo-Saharan languages (unity debated) are spoken from Tanzania to Sudan and from Chad to Mali.
There are several other small families and language isolates, as well as languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages, many of which are language isolates.
The total 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, and by some counts at "over 3,000".
Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue),
one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the
world. However, "One of the notable differences between Africa and most
other linguistic areas is its relative uniformity. With few exceptions,
all of Africa’s languages have been gathered into four major phyla."
Around a hundred languages are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people. Twelve dialect clusters
(which may group up to a hundred linguistic varieties) are spoken by 75
percent, and fifteen by 85 percent, of Africans as a first or
additional language.
Although many mid-sized languages are used on the radio, in newspapers
and in primary-school education, and some of the larger ones are
considered national languages, only a few are official at the national level. The African Union declared 2006 the "Year of African Languages".
Language groups
Map showing the traditional language families, subfamilies and major languages spoken in Africa
Most languages spoken in Africa belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger–Congo. Another hundred belong to smaller families such as Ubangian (sometimes grouped within Niger-Congo) and the various families called Khoisan, or the Indo-European and Austronesian
language families mainly spoken outside Africa; the presence of the
latter two dates to 2,600 and 1,500 years ago, respectively. In
addition, the languages of Africa include several unclassified languages and sign languages.
The earliest Afroasiatic languages are associated with the Capsian culture,
the Nilo-Saharan languages are linked with the Khartoum
Mesolithic/Neolithic, the Niger-Congo languages are correlated with the
west and central African hoe-based farming traditions and the Khoisan
languages are matched with the south and southeastern Wilton industries. More broadly, the Afroasiatic family is tentatively grouped within the Nostratic superfamily, and the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla form the Niger-Saharan macrophylum.
Afroasiatic languages
Afroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia and parts of the Sahel. There are approximately 375 Afroasiatic languages spoken by over 400 million people. The main subfamilies of Afroasiatic are Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Omotic, Egyptian and Semitic. The Afroasiatic Urheimat is uncertain. The family's most extensive branch, the Semitic languages (including Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew among others), is the only branch of Afroasiatic that is spoken outside Africa.
Some of the most widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include Arabic (a Semitic language, and a recent arrival from West Asia), Somali (Cushitic), Berber (Berber), Hausa (Chadic), Amharic (Semitic) and Oromo (Cushitic). Of the world's surviving language families, Afroasiatic has the longest written history, as both the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egyptian are members.
Nilo-Saharan languages
Nilo-Saharan languages consist of a hundred diverse languages. The family has a speech area that stretches from the Nile Valley to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo, with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River
as a geographic outlier. Genetic linkage between these languages has
not been conclusively demonstrated, and among linguists, support for the
proposal is sparse. The languages share some unusual morphology,
but if they are related, most of the branches must have undergone major
restructuring since diverging from their common ancestor. The inclusion
of the Songhay languages is questionable, and doubts have been raised over the Koman, Gumuz and Kadu branches.
Some of the better known Nilo-Saharan languages are Kanuri, Fur, Songhay, Nobiin and the widespread Nilotic family, which includes the Luo, Dinka and Maasai. The Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal.
Niger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute the largest language family spoken in West Africa and perhaps the world in terms of the number of languages. One of its salient features is an elaborate noun class system with grammatical concord. A large majority of languages of this family are tonal such as Yoruba and Igbo, Ashanti and Ewe language. A major branch of Niger–Congo languages is the Bantu phylum, which has a wider speech area than the rest of the family (see Niger–Congo B (Bantu) in the map above).
The Niger–Kordofanian language family, joining Niger–Congo with the Kordofanian languages of south-central Sudan, was proposed in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg.
Today, linguists often use "Niger–Congo" to refer to this entire
family, including Kordofanian as a subfamily. One reason for this is
that it is not clear whether Kordofanian was the first branch to diverge
from rest of Niger–Congo. Mande
has been claimed to be equally or more divergent. Niger–Congo is
generally accepted by linguists, though a few question the inclusion of
Mande and Dogon, and there is no conclusive evidence for the inclusion of Ubangian.
Other language families
Several languages spoken in Africa belong to language families concentrated or originating outside the African continent.
Austronesian
Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian languages and is the westernmost branch of the family. It is the national and co-official language of Madagascar and one of Malagasy dialects called Bushi is also spoken in Mayotte.
The ancestors of the Malagasy people migrated to Madagascar
around 1,500 years ago from Southeast Asia, more specifically the island
of Borneo. The origins of how they arrived to Madagascar remains a
mystery, however the Austronesians are known for their seafaring
culture. Despite the geographical isolation, Malagasy still has strong
resemblance to Barito languages especially the Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo.
With more than 20 million speakers, Malagasy is one of the most widely spoken of the Austronesian languages.
Indo-European
Afrikaans is Indo-European, as is most of the vocabulary of most African creole languages. Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa,
where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in
the course of the 18th century, including the loss of verbal conjugation
(save for 5 modal verbs), as well as grammatical case and gender. Most Afrikaans speakers live in South Africa. In Namibia it is the lingua franca and in Botswana and Zimbabwe
it is a minority language of roughly several ten thousand people.
Overall 15 to 20 million people are estimated to speak Afrikaans.
Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, generally as lingua francas. German was once used in Germany's colonies
there from the late 1800s until World War I, when Britain and France
took over and revoked German's official status. Despite this, German is
still spoken in Namibia, mostly among the white population. Although it lost its official status in the 1990s, it has been redesignated as a national language. Indian languages such as Gujarati are spoken by South Asian
expatriates exclusively. In earlier historical times, other
Indo-European languages could be found in various parts of the
continent, such as Old Persian and Greek in Egypt, Latin and Vandalic in North Africa and Modern Persian in the Horn of Africa.
Small families
The three small Khoisan
families of southern Africa have not been shown to be closely related
to any other major language family. In addition, there are various other
families that have not been demonstrated to belong to one of these
families. (The questionable branches of Nilo-Saharan were covered above,
and are not repeated here.)
- Mande, some 70 languages, including the major languages of Mali and Guinea. These are generally thought to be divergent Niger–Congo, but debate persists.
- Ubangian, some 70 languages, centered on the languages of the Central African Republic; may be Niger–Congo
- Khoe, around 10 languages, the primary family of Khoisan languages of Namibia and Botswana
- Sandawe, an isolate of Tanzania, possibly related to Khoe
- Kx'a, a language of Southern Africa
- Tuu, or Taa-ǃKwi, two surviving languages
- Hadza, an isolate of Tanzania
- Bangime, a likely isolate of Mali
- Jalaa, a likely isolate of Nigeria
- Laal, a possible isolate of Chad
Khoisan
is a term of convenience covering some 30 languages spoken by around
300,000–400,000 people. There are five Khoisan families that have not
been shown to be related to each other: Khoe, Tuu and Kx'a, which are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana, as well as Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, which are language isolates. A striking feature of Khoisan languages, and the reason they are often grouped together, is their use of click consonants. Some neighbouring Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and Zulu) have clicks as well, but these were adopted from Khoisan languages. The Khoisan languages are also tonal.
Creole languages
Due partly to its multilingualism and its colonial past, a substantial proportion of the world's creole languages are to be found in Africa. Some are based on Indo-European languages (e.g. Krio from English in Sierra Leone and the very similar Pidgin in Nigeria; Ghana and parts of Cameroon; Cape Verdean Creole in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Creole in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal, all from Portuguese; Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles and Mauritian Creole in Mauritius, both from French); some are based on Arabic (e.g. Juba Arabic in the southern Sudan, or Nubi in parts of Uganda and Kenya); some are based on local languages (e.g. Sango, the main language of the Central African Republic); while in Cameroon a creole based on French, English and local African languages known as Camfranglais has started to become popular.
Unclassified languages
A fair number of unclassified languages
are reported in Africa. Many remain unclassified simply for lack of
data; among the better-investigated ones that continue to resist easy
classification are:
- possibly Afroasiatic: Ongota, Gomba
- possibly Nilo-Saharan: Shabo
- possibly Niger–Congo: Jalaa, Mbre, Bayot
- possibly Khoe: Kwadi
- unknown: Laal, Mpre
Of these, Jalaa is perhaps the most likely to be an isolate.
Less-well investigated languages include Irimba, Luo, Mawa, Rer Bare (possibly Bantu), Bete (evidently Jukunoid), Bung (unclear), Kujarge (evidently Chadic), Lufu (Jukunoid), Meroitic (possibly Afroasiatic), Oropom (possibly spurious) and Weyto
(evidently Cushitic). Several of these are extinct, and adequate
comparative data is thus unlikely to be forthcoming. Hombert &
Philippson (2009)[17] 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:
- Aasax or Aramanik (Tanzania) (South Cushitic? contains non-Cushitic lexicon)
- Imeraguen (Mauritania) - Hassaniyya Arabic restructured on an Azêr (Soninke) base
- Kara (Fer?) (Central African Republic)
- Oblo (Cameroon) (Adamawa? Extinct?)
Roger Blench notes a couple additional possibilities:
Sign languages
Many African countries have national sign languages, such as Algerian Sign Language, Tunisian Sign Language, Ethiopian Sign Language. Other sign languages are restricted to small areas or single villages, such as Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana.
Tanzania has seven, one for each of its schools for the Deaf, all of
which are discouraged. Not much is known, since little has been
published on these languages.
Sign language systems extant in Africa include the Paget Gorman Sign System used in Namibia and Angola, the Sudanese Sign languages used in Sudan and South Sudan, the Arab Sign languages used across the Arab Mideast, the Francosign languages used in Francophone Africa and other areas such as Ghana and Tunisia, and the Tanzanian Sign languages used in Tanzania.
Language in Africa
Map of Africa with native place names
Throughout the long multilingual history of the African continent,
African languages have been subject to phenomena like language contact,
language expansion, language shift and language death. A case in point
is the Bantu expansion, in which Bantu-speaking peoples expanded over most of Sub-Equatorial Africa, displacing Khoi-San speaking peoples from much of Southeast Africa and Southern Africa and other peoples from Central Africa. Another example is the Arab expansion in the 7th century, which led to the extension of Arabic from its homeland in Asia, into much of North Africa and the Horn of Africa.
Trade languages
are another age-old phenomenon in the African linguistic landscape.
Cultural and linguistic innovations spread along trade routes and
languages of peoples dominant in trade developed into languages of wider
communication (lingua franca). Of particular importance in this respect are Berber (North and West Africa), Jula (western West Africa), Fulfulde (West Africa), Hausa (West Africa), Lingala (Congo), Swahili (Southeast Africa), Somali (Horn of Africa) and Arabic (North Africa and Horn of Africa).
After gaining independence, many African countries, in the search
for national unity, selected one language, generally the former
colonial language, to be used in government and education. However, in
recent years, African countries have become increasingly supportive of
maintaining linguistic diversity. Language policies that are being
developed nowadays are mostly aimed at multilingualism.
Official languages
Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese
and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level
in Africa (non-exhaustive list):
- Afroasiatic
- Arabic in Algeria, Chad, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia and Zanzibar (Tanzania)
- Berber in Morocco and Algeria
- Amharic in Ethiopia
- Somali in Somalia and Djibouti
- Tigrinya in Eritrea and Tigray (Ethiopia)
- Austronesian
- French Creole
- Indo-European
- Niger-Congo
- Chewa in Malawi and Zimbabwe
- Comorian in the Comoros
- Kinyarwanda in Rwanda
- Kirundi in Burundi
- Sesotho in Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe
- Setswana/Tswana in Botswana and South Africa
- Shona, Sindebele in Zimbabwe
- Sepedi in South Africa
- Ndebele in South Africa
- Swahili in Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
- Swati in Eswatini (Swaziland) and South Africa
- Tsonga in South Africa
- Venda in South Africa
- Xhosa in South Africa
- Zulu in South Africa
| Language | Family | Official Status per Country |
|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Indo-European | South Africa |
| Amharic | Afroasiatic | Ethiopia |
| Arabic | Afroasiatic | Algeria, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, |
| Berber | Afroasiatic | Algeria, Morocco |
| Chewa | Niger-Congo | Malawi, Zimbabwe |
| Comorian | Niger-Congo | Comoros |
| Kinyarwanda | Niger-Congo | Rwanda |
| Kirundi | Niger-Congo | Burundi |
| Malagasy | Austronesian | Madagascar |
| Ndebele | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
| Sepedi | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
| Sesotho | Niger-Congo | Lesotho, South Africa, Zimbabwe |
| Setswana/Tswana | Niger-Congo | Botswana, South Africa |
| Seychelles Creole | French Creole | Seychelles |
| Shona | Niger-Congo | Zimbabwe |
| Sindebele | Niger-Congo | Zimbabwe |
| Somalia | Afroasiatic | Somalia, Djibouti |
| Swahili | Niger-Congo | Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda |
| Swati | Niger-Congo | Eswatini, South Africa |
| Tigrinya | Afroasiatic | Eritrea, Tigray (Ethiopia) |
| Tsonga | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
| Venda | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
| Xhosa | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
| Zulu | Niger-Congo | South Africa |
List of Which Languages are Spoken in Which African Countries
| Country | Languages |
|---|---|
| Algeria | Arabic (spoken by 72%), French (used by government, media, etc.), Tamazight (Berber) (spoken by 27.4%) |
| Angola | Fiote (2.9%), Kimbundu, Kikongo (8.24%), Portuguese (71%), Umbundu (23%) |
| Benin | Bariba, Fon (24%), French, Mina, Yom, and Yoruba |
| Botswana | English (2.8%), Tswana/Setswana (77.3%), |
| South Africa | Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Sepedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu |
Cross-border languages
The colonial borders established by European powers following the Berlin Conference
in 1884–1885 divided a great many ethnic groups and African language
speaking communities. This can cause divergence of a language on either
side of a border (especially when the official languages are different),
for example, in orthographic standards. Some notable cross-border
languages include Berber (which stretches across much of North Africa and some parts of West Africa), Somali (stretches across most of the Horn of Africa), Swahili (spoken in the African Great Lakes region), Fula (in the Sahel and West Africa) and Luo (in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan).
Some prominent Africans such as former Malian president and former Chairman of the African Commission, Alpha Oumar Konaré, have referred to cross-border languages as a factor that can promote African unity.
Language change and planning
Language
is not static in Africa any more than on other continents. In addition
to the (likely modest) impact of borders, there are also cases of dialect levelling (such as in Igbo and probably many others), koinés (such as N'Ko and possibly Runyakitara) and emergence of new dialects (such as Sheng). In some countries, there are official efforts to develop standardized language versions.
There are also many less widely spoken languages that may be considered endangered languages.
Demographics
Of the 1 billion Africans (in 2009), about 17 percent speak an Arabic dialect. About 10 percent speak Swahili, the lingua franca of Southeast Africa; about 5 percent speak a Berber dialect; and about 5 percent speak Hausa, which serves as a lingua franca in much of the Sahel. Other important West African languages are Yoruba, Igbo and Fula. Major Horn of Africa languages are Amharic, Oromo and Somali. Important South African languages are Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans.
English, French and Portuguese are important languages in Africa.
About 130 million, 115 million and 35 million Africans, respectively,
speak them as either native or secondary languages. Portuguese has
become the national language of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, and
Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique. The economies of
Angola and Mozambique are quickly becoming economic powerhouses in
Africa. Through (among other factors) sheer demographic weight, Africans are increasingly taking ownership
of these three world languages as they are having an ever-greater
influence on the research, economic growth and development in the
African countries where English, French and Portuguese are spoken.
Linguistic features
Some
linguistic features are particularly common among languages spoken in
Africa, whereas others are less common. Such shared traits probably are
not due to a common origin of all African languages. Instead, some may
be due to language contact (resulting in borrowing) and specific idioms and phrases may be due to a similar cultural background.
Phonological
Some widespread phonetic features include:
- certain types of consonants, such as implosives (/ɓa/), ejectives (/kʼa/), the labiodental flap and in southern Africa, clicks (/ǂa/, /ᵑǃa/). True implosives are rare outside Africa, and clicks and the flap almost unheard of.
- doubly articulated labial-velar stops like /k͡pa/ and /ɡ͡ba/ are found in places south of the Sahara.
- prenasalized consonants, like /mpa/ and /ŋɡa/, are widespread in Africa but not common outside it.
- sequences of stops and fricatives at the beginnings of words, such as /fsa/, /pta/ and /dt͡sk͡xʼa/.
- nasal stops which only occur with nasal vowels, such as [ba] vs. [mã] (but both [pa] and [pã]), especially in West Africa.
- vowels contrasting an advanced or retracted tongue, commonly called "tense" and "lax".
- simple tone systems which are used for grammatical purposes.
Sounds that are relatively uncommon in African languages include uvular consonants, diphthongs and front rounded vowels.
Tonal languages
are found throughout the world but are predominantly used in Africa.
Both the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoi-San phyla are fully tonal. The large
majority of the Niger–Congo languages are also tonal. Tonal languages
are also found in the Omotic, Chadic and South & East Cushitic
branches of Afroasiatic. The most common type of tonal system opposes
two tone levels, High (H) and Low (L). Contour tones do occur, and can often be analysed as two or more tones in succession on a single syllable. Tone melodies
play an important role, meaning that it is often possible to state
significant generalizations by separating tone sequences ("melodies")
from the segments that bear them. Tonal sandhi processes like tone spread, tone shift, downstep and downdrift are common in African languages.
Syntactic
Widespread
syntactical structures include the common use of adjectival verbs and
the expression of comparison by means of a verb 'to surpass'. The
Niger–Congo languages have large numbers of genders (noun classes) which cause agreement in verbs and other words. Case, tense and other categories may be distinguished only by tone.
Semantic
Quite often, only one term is used for both animal and meat; the word nama or nyama for animal/meat is particularly widespread in otherwise widely divergent African languages.
