With more than 250 ethnic groups speaking over 500 languages and dialects, English is the country’s official business language, whether you’re actually on business or just on safari. ... As you travel across West Africa, the style of Pidgin spoken becomes more familiar, but still differs based on local language elements infused into it. ...May 17, 2021 · Two of the largest are the Hausa and Fulani. The Hausa, who number around 20 million, are found mostly in northwestern Nigeria and southern Niger, though there are also Hausa living in other West African countries, like Togo, Benin, and Ghana. The Hausa language is the most widely spoken language in West Africa. 21 feb 2017 ... The amazingly diverse languages of Africa. This a continent with a very high linguistic diversity, there are an estimated 2200 African ...Yoruba (IPA: /jōrùbá/, UK: / ˈjɒrʊbə /, [2] US: / ˈjɒrəbə /; [3] Yor. Èdè Yorùbá; Ajami: عِدعِ يوْرُبا) is a language spoken in West Africa, primarily in Southwestern and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speakers is roughly 44 million, plus about 2 million second-language ...A Wolof speaker, recorded in Taiwan. Wolof (/ ˈ w oʊ l ɒ f /; Wolof làkk, وࣷلࣷفْ لࣵکّ) is a language of Senegal, Mauritania, and the Gambia, and the native language of the Wolof people.Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Senegambian branch of the Niger–Congo language family.Unlike most other languages of the Niger-Congo family, …Except for Arabic and Hausa, the major languages are from the Niger-Congo family: Yoruba, Igbo, Fulfulde/Pulaar, Akan, and Wolof. However, the remaining language groups are well-represented as the continental sub-region is home to native speakers of over 500 languages.List of official and spoken languages of African countries.Nigeria is making an impact on the world. According to the Pew Research Center, there are over 200 million people living in Nigeria alone and there are estimated to be over 700 million Nigerians in the country by 2100. That would make it the third most populous country in the world. And is definitely a reason to bump Yoruba (or Igbo and Hausa ...Sep 7, 2019 · Yoruba is one of West Africa’s most spoken languages, accounting for over 30 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and it is one of Nigeria’s official languages. It is also widely spoken by West African expats in the US and UK. It is the mother tongue of the Yoruba people in Nigeria, and has over fifteen dialects including Awori ... West Africa. Zarma language of the Songhay family. It is the language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger, and it is the second leading language of Niger, after Hausa, which is spoken in south central Niger; Tadaksahak is a Songhay language spoken by the pastoralist Idaksahak of the Ménaka area of MaliInteractive map of 5 West African languages + French. Both are known by a range of local names but are widely held to be mutually intelligible to varying degrees …Africa is a continent that is home to great cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Let's explore the different languages spoken on the world's ...Mar 1, 2020 · Interesting facts to know about languages in Africa is that they form part of four language groups, namely Afro-Asiatic covering Northern Africa, Central Sahara and the Horn of Africa, Nilo-Saharan covering Central and Eastern Africa, Niger-Congo covering Central, Southern and Eastern Africa and Khoisan, covering the western part of Southern ... The official language of Liberia is English, in which many of the records from the period of British colonization have been kept. Liberia is a multilingual country where more than thirty languages are spoken. English is the official language and over 20 indigenous languages are spoken, representing the numerous ethnic groups who make up more than 95% of the population. None of the other ...The purpose of the Journal of West African Languages is to publish articles of good quality and interest in all aspects of language and linguistics that are relevant to the area of West Africa, which may be defined as Sub-Saharan Africa, extending into Central Africa. The Journal was founded in 1964 by the West African Linguistic Society, and ... West African languages West Africa is a linguistic hotspot boasting hundreds of languages in the 16 countries that make up this region. Prominent languages include Hausa, widely spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Ghana and Cameroon; Yoruba and Igbo, both prevalent in Nigeria; and Akan, commonly spoken in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.In the 1940s, African American scholar Lorenzo D. Turner undertook a linguistic study to find out the origin and composition of the Gullah/Geechee language. He discovered the presence of many words and syntax of West African language origins in Gullah, especially in languages still spoken along the Rice Coast of West Africa.Kwa languages, a branch of the Niger-Congo language family consisting of 45 languages spoken by approximately 20 million people in the southern areas of Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin and in the extreme southwestern corner of Nigeria. The Kwa languages are divided into two groups. The largerThe 800 to 1,000 languages spoken in Africa today can be grouped into four families, or groups of languages thought to have common origins—Hamito-Semitic, or Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo-Kordofanian, Nilo …Jul 30, 2017 · Interactive map of 5 West African languages + French. Both are known by a range of local names but are widely held to be mutually intelligible to varying degrees depending on the region/speaker etc. For comparison's sake, I also included data for French as well as three other major West African languages (Mooré, Songhay and Wolof). gathering about thirty languages in Western part of Southern Africa. All African languages are considered official languages of the African Union Map showing the distribution of African language families and some …Hamas released a video Monday night of a young French-Israeli woman being held hostage in the Gaza Strip. In the video, Mia Schem, 21, says she suffered an …The language is one of the largest in West Africa and it has an estimated 30 million native users while an additional 20 million people use the language as the second language. Hausa is a West Chadic language under the larger Chadic language group of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Hausa is made up of numerous geographically defined …Supporters of Niger's ruling junta hold a Russian flag on Aug. 3. (Sam Mednick/AP) 13 min. When Israeli businessmen Royi Burstien and Lior Chorev touched …West Africa. Zarma language of the Songhay family. It is the language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger, and it is the second leading language of Niger, after Hausa, which is spoken in south central Niger; Tadaksahak is a Songhay language spoken by the pastoralist Idaksahak of the Ménaka area of MaliAbbott envisions a tool that could instantly translate a complex scientific text into any of six African languages: the West African languages Yoruba and Hausa, the East African languages Luganda and Amharic, and the southern African languages isiZulu and Northern Sotho. “The long-term goal of the project is to have a Google …Volta-Niger (also known as "West Benue-Congo" or "East Kwa"): a large linkage of West African languages, accounting for roughly 110–120 million speakers (late 2010s). Gbe: spoken in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, of which Ewe (7 million speakers in 2017) is the largest and best known.This theory generally excludes African influence on AAVE. The creole hypothesis. Modern AAVE is the result of a creole derived from English and various West African languages. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a creole is “a mother tongue formed from the contact of two languages” at an early stage.TDR, with support from Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is strengthening capacity to conduct implementation research using a One Health approach to investigate the impact of climate change on health.One Health is a key component of the TDR Strategy 2024-2029, which recognizes the importance of understanding the complex interactions between humans, animals and their ...West Africa is, without doubt, the powerhouse of the African continent. Many people, however, find it confusing on which country or not is in the region. Here is a list of countries in West Africa ... 1960, and this accounts for French as the official language, however, indigenous languages such as Fon and Yoruba are also commonly spoken. ...Covering Central, West and Southeast Africa, the Niger-Congo language family contains around 1,400 distinct languages (as opposed to dialects). It is the largest …The most widely spoken languages of Africa, Swahili (200 million), Yoruba (45 million), Igbo (30 million), and Fula (35 million) all belong to the Niger-Congo family. Learn more about the Niger-Congo language family on Ethnologue. AfroasiaticEnglish is the official language of The Gambia and is thus used for official purposes and education. Other languages include Mandinka, Wolof, Fula, Serer, Soninke, Krio, Jola and other indigenous vernaculars. Owing to the country's geographical setting, knowledge of French (an official language in much of West Africa) is relatively widespread.24 jul 2023 ... With its new constitution, Mali has dropped French, which has been the West African country's official language since 1960. Under the new ...Bantu languages have spread over much of Africa, reducing the previous levels of diversity. One endangered language in this area is Yangkam, spoken by fewer than 100 people, all of whom are 50 years old or older. Most of the Yangkam have shifted to speaking Hausa, one of the major national languages of Nigeria.May 20, 2021 · One of the major African languages on the western side of the continent, Hausa is spoken mainly in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Benin and Chad. Fula. Stretching across some 20 countries in Central and West Africa, Fula has 65 million speakers when all of its dialects are counted. This makes it one of the most spoken West African languages. The “basic” order of constituents in a language is typically defined by the position of subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) in declarative, affirmative, active main clauses which are morphologically and pragmatically unmarked. 2 According to Heine (1976, 2008), the proportion of languages with S–V–O constituent order is much higher in Africa than globally; it is the basic order of ...The Sahel region (/ s ə ˈ h ɛ l /; from Arabic ساحل (sāḥil) 'coast, shore') or Sahelian acacia savanna is a biogeographic region in Africa.It is the transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a hot steppe climate and stretches across the southernmost latitudes of North Africa between …West Africa is, without doubt, the powerhouse of the African continent. Many people, however, find it confusing on which country or not is in the region. Here is a list of countries in West Africa ... 1960, and this accounts for French as the official language, however, indigenous languages such as Fon and Yoruba are also commonly spoken. ...In Africa, majority of native English speakers are from South Africa, and the language is most spoken in Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe. African languages form part of four language groups, namely Afro ... ... Africans arrived mostly from regions of present day eastern Nigeria to West Central Africa. These Africans would have primarily spoken languages of the ...Africa - Diversity, Ethnicity, Languages: The knowledge of most of the individual languages of Africa is still very incomplete, but there are known to be in excess of 1,500 …These were not short lived: West African Pidgin English, whose roots lie in the 17th and 18th centuries, is today more widespread (in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana) than English as a second language. Pidgin English was not the only code used, as the African interpreters returning from training in England would have acquired English as an L2. 24 jul 2023 ... With its new constitution, Mali has dropped French, which has been the West African country's official language since 1960. Under the new ...Oct 17, 2023 · We sure can! West Africa is a linguistically diverse region with hundreds of languages spoken. Some of the most common West African languages include Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, and Wolof. In addition, many West African countries use English, French, and Portuguese as official languages due to their colonial histories. The West African nation of Sierra Leone declared Bengali as the official language. The move was a recognition of the contributions of the Bangladeshi peacekeeping forces in the country's civil war. Bangladeshi forces, which constituted the largest part of the UN Mission, played a significant role in fighting the rebels during the civil war ...The five regions of Africa. The United Nations Geoscheme divides Africa into 5 subregions: Northern Africa, West Africa, East Africa, Middle Africa, and Southern Africa. There are 54 countries in Africa. An estimated 1.369 billion people live in Africa. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, while the Seychelles is the least populous.The principle languages on the continent include Arabic, French and English. Arabic was ranked the 5th most spoken language in the world by research group …Burkina Faso (UK: / b ər ˌ k iː n ə ˈ f æ s oʊ / bər-KEE-nə FASS-oh, US: /-ˈ f ɑː s oʊ / ⓘ- FAH-soh; French: [buʁkina faso], Fula: 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of 274,200 km 2 (105,900 sq mi), bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south ...A virtual guide to Benin. The Republic of Benin is from north to south a long stretched country in West Africa, situated east of Togo and west of Nigeria, it is bordered to the north by Burkina Faso and Niger, in south by the the Bight of Benin, in the Gulf of Guinea, that part of the tropical North Atlantic Ocean which is roughly south of West ...The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family.They include Arabic, Amharic, Hebrew, and numerous other ancient and modern languages.They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and expatriate …WEST AFRICA AND THE ARABIC LANGUAGE1 JOHN O. HUNWICK Arabic is what I often describe as 'the Latin of Africa', since it has played a role in West Africa (and some other parts of Africa) over the past millennium as Latin did in Europe in the Medieval era. As for Latin, it was the native language of the Romans,Mar 17, 2023 · Most spoken European language in Africa. 8. Shona: Shona or chiShona is another language of Bantu origin. It is spoken by Shona people in Zimbabwe. Shona language is spoken by about 13 million people. Most spoken language in South and West Africa. It has variety of dialects which are; Zezuru, Karanga, Korekore, Manyika, and Ndau. Guinea (/ ˈ ɡ ɪ n i / ⓘ GHIN-ee), officially the Republic of Guinea (French: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa.It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Cote d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sierra Leone and Liberia to the south. It is sometimes referred to as …Languages of West Africa . West Africa is home to well over 1,000 languages. On a daily basis, one person may communicate in many languages: their mother tongue; other African languages; languages …French and English are official languages, a heritage of Cameroon's colonial past as a colony of both France and the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1961. Eight out of the ten regions of Cameroon are primarily francophone, representing 83% of the country's population, and two are anglophone, representing 17%. The official percentage of French …Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afroasiatic language family. [7] Geographic distribution[ edit] linguistic groups of Nigeria in 1979. Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in southern Niger and northern Nigeria.Among the African languages spoken in Guinea-Bissau, some 20 languages and dialects classified in the Atlantic and Mande branches of Niger-Congo languages predominate. Although Portuguese is the country’s official and formal language, it is Crioulo —a creole that emerged during the slave trade—that is spoken as the lingua …Jul 13, 2022 · West Africa is a region rich in natural resources with diverse cultures. The region's climate varies from tropical to sub-tropical and humid to arid. The people of West Africa are very warm ... The current population of Western Africa is 442,936,859 as of Thursday, October 12, 2023, based on the latest United Nations estimates. Western Africa population is equivalent to 5.47% of the total world population. Western Africa ranks number 2 in Africa among subregions ranked by Population. The population density in Western Africa is 73 per ...The region may be divided into several broad physiographic regions. The northern portion of western Africa is composed of a broad band of semiarid terrain, called the western Sudan, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the area of Lake Chad on the east, a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km). It is largely a plateau of …Business News. The African continent is the second largest on earth, covering about 30 million square kilometres. About 1.2 billion people live in Africa and although about 2,000 indigenous languages exist, English, French or Arabic are spoken officially in many places. Africa's turbulent history with its colonisation is the reason for the use ...The region of West Africa includes the southern portion of the bulge of the continent, which extends westward to the Atlantic Ocean. This region is bisected by the African Transition Zone, which borders the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The main physical features include the Sahara Desert and the Niger River. Official languages in Africa: Bambara in Mali [22] Bobo in Mali [22] Bozo in Mali [22] Chewa in Malawi and Zimbabwe. Comorian in the Comoros. Dogon in Mali [22] Fula in Mali [22] Kassonke in Mali [22] Kongo in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Republic of the Congo. Kinyarwanda in ... The purpose of the Journal of West African Languages is to publish articles of good quality and interest in all aspects of language and linguistics that are relevant to the area of …Official languages in Africa: Bambara in Mali [22] Bobo in Mali [22] Bozo in Mali [22] Chewa in Malawi and Zimbabwe. Comorian in the Comoros. Dogon in Mali [22] Fula in Mali [22] Kassonke in Mali [22] Kongo in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, and Republic of the Congo. Kinyarwanda in ... One of the major African languages on the western side of the continent, Hausa is spoken mainly in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Benin and Chad. Fula. Stretching across some 20 countries in Central and West Africa, Fula has 65 million speakers when all of its dialects are counted. This makes it one of the most spoken West African languages.Despite increased access to mobile technology in Africa, internet adoption was still lagging behind. Promoting local languages and providing relevant, homegrown content could increase internet adoption across the African continent, a new re...In this chapter, we contextualise English within a decolonial perspective of multilingualism in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly South Africa. In so doing, we lay bare some of the historically invisibilised circuits of intellectual exchange flowing from the geopolitical South to the geopolitical north around multilingualism. After a short ...A comprehensive list of West African languages. Gbedde Gbo Geji Gen Gengle Gera Geruma Gingwak Gira Gizigz Goernai Gokana Gombi Gonia Gonja Gornun Gourmanchéma Gubi Gudu Guéré Guinea-Bissau Creole Gun Gur Gure Gurmana Guro Gururntum Gusu Gwa Gwamba Gwandara Gwari Gwom Gwoza Gyem Hassaniya Arabic Hausa Hindi Holma Hona Humono Hyam Ibeno Ibibio Ichen Idoma Ifè Igala Igbo Igede Ijaw Ijumu Ika ...Khoi-San (unity doubtful; Khoikhoi, San, Sandawe + Hadza) Malayo-Polynesian ( Malagasy) Indo-European ( Afrikaaner) The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each population generally having its own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and ...Cape Verdean Creole is a creole language based mainly on Portuguese, and also on West African languages which is spoken mainly in Cape Verde. In 2017 there were about 871,000 speakers. It is also spoken by the Cape Verdean diaspora in in other countries, such as Angola, Brazil, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal and Senegal.Burkina Faso is a multilingual country. An estimated 70 languages are spoken there, of which about 66 are indigenous. [1] Mooré is spoken by about 52.5% of the population, mainly in the central region around the capital, Ouagadougou. French is the official language. In the west, Mande languages are widely spoken, the most predominant …Except for Arabic and Hausa, the major languages are from the Niger-Congo family: Yoruba, Igbo, Fulfulde/Pulaar, Akan, and Wolof. However, the remaining language groups are well-represented as the continental sub-region is home to native speakers of over 500 languages. A guide to the varieties of French used all over! | Talk in FrenchThe Sahel region (/ s ə ˈ h ɛ l /; from Arabic ساحل (sāḥil) 'coast, shore') or Sahelian acacia savanna is a biogeographic region in Africa.It is the transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a hot steppe climate and stretches across the southernmost latitudes of North Africa between …24 jul 2023 ... With its new constitution, Mali has dropped French, which has been the West African country's official language since 1960. Under the new ...Sep 7, 2019 · Yoruba is one of West Africa’s most spoken languages, accounting for over 30 million speakers in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and it is one of Nigeria’s official languages. It is also widely spoken by West African expats in the US and UK. It is the mother tongue of the Yoruba people in Nigeria, and has over fifteen dialects including Awori ... A widespread phonological pattern in African languages of the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan families is a type of vowel harmony or assimilation based on a phonological feature [ATR], or advanced tongue root. This article introduces the general behavior of African ATR harmony systems, briefly describes their geographic and …These were not short lived: West African Pidgin English, whose roots lie in the 17th and 18th centuries, is today more widespread (in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Ghana) than English as a second language. Pidgin English was not the only code used, as the African interpreters returning from training in England would have acquired English as an L2.The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic, sometimes Afrasian), also known as Hamito-Semitic or Semito-Hamitic, are a language family (or "phylum") of about 400 languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara and Sahel.West African Pidgin English, also called Guinea Coast Creole English, was a language of commerce spoken along the coast during the Atlantic slave trade in the late 17th and 18th Centuries. This ...It is estimated that there are over 1500 African languages and hundreds of languages spoken in western and west-central Africa, all of which are their own unique languages and not regional dialects.By Ajami manuscripts, I mean manuscripts containing Ajami elements; that is, wo, African Storybook (Saide, Braamfontein, South Africa) Search under "Read" by language. , Map 2: Colonial Languages. Map 2 (found below) shows languages that were introduced to Afri, Jan 27, 2023 · The types of Gbe language in West Africa: A quantitative analysis of their lexical and gramm, The most widely spoken languages of Africa, Swahili (200 million), Yor, The region may be divided into several broad physiographic regions. The northern portion of western A, It is a creole based on English and West African languages, and it is spoken by s, List of official and spoken languages of African countries. , Cape Verdean Creole is a creole language based mainly on Po, These were not short lived: West African Pidgin English, whose r, Feb 8, 2020 · North Africa: Arabic dialects, including Egyptian Arab, The numbers shown correspond to the dates of all Iron, Languages of West Africa . West Africa is home to well o, Bantu languages have spread over much of Africa, reducing the prev, 14 may 2014 ... “Kru, Ibo, Yoruba” seems to be most dominant (, A guide to the varieties of French used all over! | , Of all four, the Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan are fou, The Mandinka language ( Mandi'nka kango; Ajami: مَانْدِينْكَا ك.