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The most common language spoken as a first language by South Africans is Zulu (23 percent), followed by Xhosa (16 percent), and Afrikaans (14 percent). English is the fourth most common first language in the country (9.6%), but is understood in most urban areas and is the dominant language in government and the media. [4]
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. [5] It became one of South Africa's 12 official languages in 1994. [6] According to Ethnologue, it is the second-most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Swahili.
List of countries by number of languages. This is a list of the number of languages by country and dependency according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [1] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world. [2][3]
Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa, where it is an official language. More than half of the South African population can understand it, with over 13.78 million first-language and over 15 million second-language speakers. [10] Many Zulu people also speak Xitsonga, Sesotho and others from among South Africa's 12 official ...
Afrikaans is an official language of the Republic of South Africa and a recognised national language of the Republic of Namibia. Post-apartheid South Africa has seen a loss of preferential treatment by the government for Afrikaans, in terms of education, social events, media (TV and radio), and general status throughout the country, given that ...
The Khoisan languages (/ ˈkɔɪsɑːn / KOY-sahn; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. [ 1 ][ 2 ] Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click consonants and do not belong to other African language families. For much of the 20th century, they were thought ...
Free State (province) The Free State (Sotho: Freistata; Afrikaans: Vrystaat [ˈfrɛistɑːt]; Xhosa: iFreyistata; Tswana: Foreistata; Zulu: iFuleyisitata), formerly known as the Orange Free State, is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Bloemfontein, which is also South Africa 's judicial capital. Its historical origins lie in the Boer ...
Black South African English, or BSAE, is spoken by individuals whose first language is an indigenous African tongue. [4] 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 ]