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Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world. This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect.
Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world. [2] [3] Number of living languages and speakers ... South Africa: 30 12 42 0.59 51,004,892
Worldwide, Afrikaans and Dutch as native or second language are spoken by approximately 46 million people. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, [1] [2] [3] particularly in written form.
Conversely, many commonly accepted languages, including German, Italian, and English, encompass varieties that are not mutually intelligible. [1] While Arabic is sometimes considered a single language centred on Modern Standard Arabic , other authors consider its mutually unintelligible varieties separate languages. [ 3 ]
These include Arabic, Swahili, Amharic, Oromo, Igbo, Somali, Hausa, Manding, Fulani and Yoruba, which are spoken as a second (or non-first) language by millions of people. Although many African languages are used on the radio, in newspapers and in primary-school education, and some of the larger ones are considered national languages, only a ...
Statistics South Africa estimated a net 304,112 white residents left the country over the years 1986–2000 with another 341,000 over the period 2001–2016. [117] This emigration is the source of a notable Afrikaner diaspora today.
A man from Labé, Guinea, speaking Pular and West African French. African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 320 million people in Africa in 2023 or 67% of the French-speaking population of the world [1] [2] [3] spread across 34 countries and territories.
The Berber (or Libyco-Berber) languages are spoken today by perhaps 16 million people. [27] They are often considered to constitute a single language with multiple dialects. [28] Other scholars, however, argue that they are a group of around twelve languages, about as different from each other as the Romance or Germanic languages. [29]