The languages of South Africa
South Africa is a multilingual country. Besides the 11 officially recognised languages, scores of others - African, European, Asian and more - are spoken here, as the country lies at the crossroads of southern Africa.
The country's Constitution guarantees equal status to 11 official languages to cater for the country's diverse peoples and their cultures. These are:
Other languages spoken in South Africa and mentioned in the Constitution are the Khoi, Nama and San languages, sign language, Arabic, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu. There are also a few indigenous creoles and pidgins.
English is generally understood across the country, being the language of business, politics and the media, and the country's lingua franca. But it only ranks joint fifth out of 11 as a home language.
South Africa's linguistic diversity means all 11 languages have had a profound effect on each other. South African English, for example, is littered with words and phrases from Afrikaans, isiZulu, Nama and other African languages.
Language distribution
According to the 2001 census, isiZulu is the mother tongue of 23.8% of South Africa's population, followed by isiXhosa at 17.6%, Afrikaans at 13.3%, Sepedi at 9.4%, and English and Setswana each at 8.2%.
Other non-official languages
The constitution also recognizes nine other unofficial "National language":
Fanagalo, Joi, Saint, Nama, Lobedu (Khilobedu), North Ndebele (Sindebele), Fucio (Siphuthi), Sign language and Tamil.
The fanagalo is a pidgin based on the Zulu, Afrikaans and English and used as lingua franca mining industries. The joi, the San and Nama are the original languages or dialect groups of Hottentots and Bushmen, Indigenous inhabitants of western South Africa, and belong to the Khoisan familyCharacterized by the use of clicking. The lobedu, Nama, Northern Ndebele and are FUCI Niger-Congo languages branch Bantu. Tamil is a Dravidian language native of India and is spoken by a small minority of South Africans of Asian origin.
Census
The census year 2001 reported the following percentages of speakers in the languages:
Languages | Speakers | % |
10.677 million | 23.8% | |
7.907 million | 17.6% | |
5.983 million | 13.3% | |
4.209 million | 9.4% | |
3.677 million | 8.2% | |
3.673 million | 8.2% | |
3.555 million | 7.9% | |
1.992 million | 4.4% |
Staff:
Ms.Fatima Sanchez
Ms. Fatima Sosa
Ms.Eugenia Zambon
Ms.Irene Victoria Zualet
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