The 10 most spoken African languages on the continent
According to the African Academy of Languages (Acalan), created in 2005 by the African Union (AU) and based in Bamako, there are more than 2,000 languages in Africa belonging to four major families. Among these languages, about a hundred would be mastered by more than a million speakers.
The most spoken would be in order:
1. Arabic (150 million people) – (Excluded by the Alacan)
2. Kiswahili (more than 100 million)
3. Amharic (50 million)
4. The hausa (35 million)
5. The Yoruba (30 million)
6. Oromo (25 million)
7. The ibo (24 million)
8. Combined Kinyarwanda and Kirundi ($ 20 million)
9. Lingala (13 million)
10. Isizoulou and isixhosa combined (10 and 8 million)
Some details on some of the languages
Arabic has 150 million speakers, from Egypt (92 million) to Morocco (34 million), Algeria (40 million), Tunisia (11 million) and Libya (6 million) .
There are 10 African countries in which Kiswahili is spoken. With more than 100 million speakers, the Swahili region goes from the five eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Mozambique, the Great Lakes (Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania), Kenya and Somalia.
Lingala has about 13 million speakers in both the Congo, the Central African Republic and Angola.
With 30 million speakers, Yoruba is found in Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
Oromo (25.5 million people) is spoken in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti.
Amharic is spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Djibouti. It is spoken as a mother tongue by 29% of the Ethiopian population, ie 28 million people, but is understood and mastered as a second language by at least half of the country’s nationals, or 50 million people.
One of the projects of the Acalan is the setting up of an atlas of African languages which would be the first of its kind to emanate from the continent.
Source: Rfi.fr
