Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal ...
Afrikaans is an official language of the Republic of South Africa and a recognised national language of the Republic of Namibia.
Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa (24% of the population), and it is understood by over 50% of its population. It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994. According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili.
South Africa has 12 official languages: Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans, English, Pedi, Tswana, Southern Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda, and Southern Ndebele (in order of first language speakers), as well as South African Sign Language which was recognised as an official language in 2023.
Important South African languages are Sotho, Tswana, Pedi, Venda, Tsonga, Swazi, Southern Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans. [34] French, English, and Portuguese are important languages in Africa due to colonialism.
Black South African English, or BSAE, is spoken by individuals whose first language is an indigenous African tongue. BSAE is considered a "new" English because it has emerged through the education system among second-language speakers in places where English is not the majority language. [4]
Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia; [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] it is a separate standard language rather than a national variety, unlike Netherlands Dutch, Belgian Dutch and Surinamese Dutch.
Southern Transvaal Ndebele is one of the eleven official languages in the Republic of South Africa. The language is a Nguni or Zunda classification (UN) spoken mostly in the Mpumalanga Province, Gauteng, Limpopo and the Northwest.
Venḓa or Tshivenḓa is a Bantu language and an official language of South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is mainly spoken by the Venda people or Vhavenḓa in the northern part of South Africa's Limpopo province, as well as by some Lemba people in South Africa.
South African census figures suggest a growing number of first language Afrikaans speakers in all nine provinces, a total of 6.85 million in 2011 compared to 5.98 million a decade earlier. 2001 Namibian census reported that 11.4% of Namibians had Afrikaans as their home language.