African Languages

Languages of Africa

There are somewhere between 1250 and 3000 extant languages in the continent of Africa.  Which is frickin HUGE. Seriously. We in the US have no idea how freaking HUGE Africa is, and sadly a good number of us don’t seem to care. The graphic below, by Kai Krause (public domain), provides some perspective. (Right-click and open this in another window, then blow it up so you can read it more easily. It will Blow Your Mind. Basically, the ENTIRE WORLD, minus Russia, Australia, Antarctica, and a few other bits and pieces, can fit inside Africa. Huge. SO FREAKING HUGE.)

Enough of that. In any case, Africa houses as many as HALF the languages in existence.

Though many of the languages in Africa are spoken by a small number of people, and some are nearing extinction, they’re some of the most fascinating—and complicated—languages in existence. Some linguists even believe that some of the languages, particularly the “click” languages of sub-Saharan Africa, might be the oldest languages in the world. Which would make sense. If humanity began in Africa, which it did, then by logical extension, language started there, as well. It’s also interesting to note that the greatest genetic diversity in the human population exists in the same areas of Africa that contain the greatest linguistic diversity, both in types of languages and in the complexity of the languages and the number of sounds required to produce those languages. In both genetic and linguistic terms, this kind of diversity develops when a gene pool or a language is left alone over a long period of time—centuries. Millennia. It’s entirely possible that our most ancient ancestors—the Adams and Eves of the human race, as it were—conversed in clicks and pops before they found their way to words, and that those earliest forms of organized communication were more similar to the San family of languages in Africa than they are to any other language on the planet.

Think on that for a minute. Mind blown yet? If so, then proceed.

Families of African Languages by USER:SUM1 via Wikipedia 

There are six major languages families in Africa. They are as follows: 

(LINKS COMING SOON)

• Afroasiatic—Western Asia, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, parts of the Sahel 
• Nilo-Saharan—spoken from Tanzania to Sudan, and from Chad to Mali 
• Niger-Congo, with a subdivision of Bantu—both Bantu and non-Bantu languages in this family are found in West, Central, Southeast, and Southern Africa 
• Khoisan—limited to the Kalahari Desert in Namibia and Botswana, and the Rift Valley in Tanzania 
• Indo-European—South Africa and Nambia as well as former colonies of Britain, the US, France, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain, because unfortunately the history of Africa is a history of colonization, forced assimilation, and language loss for its indigenous peoples. 
• Austronesian--Madagascar 

The map above shows the distribution of the main groupings. The map below shows less than 20%--that’s right, less than ONE FIFTH—of the actual languages spoken in the various regions of the continent. It’s estimated that Nigeria all by itself is home to more than five hundred languages.

The map below shows one reason why most of these languages are endangered. It shows the official languages of Africa. Please note only one is an African language. 

This makes me sad. 

In addition to the languages mentioned here, there are almost a hundred languages used for communication between groups, including Arabic, Swahili, Yoruba, Berber, and Amharic. There are also a few small languages families and some language isolates and several sign languages. Many of those are also isolates.

That’s a lot of languages. 

I shall now proceed to explain all 3,000+.... 

No, please come back. I won’t do that. Instead, just click on the links above for the language groupings, and you’ll find a page with a breakdown of each individual family. That’ll be easier on all of us.