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African Languages
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Amharic is a Semitic language spoken in
North Central Ethiopia by the Amhara.
It is the second most spoken Semitic language in the world, after Arabic,
and the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
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Chinyanja is a Bantu language family widely
spoken in south-central Africa.
Chinyanja is the National language of the Republic of Malawi,
the official language being English, and as Chinyanja is one of the seven official
tribal languages of Zambia, where it is spoken mostly
in the Eastern Province and in Lusaka.
It is also spoken in Mozambique, especially in the provinces of Tete and Niassa, as well as
in Zimbabwe where, according to some estimates, it ranks
as the third most widely used
local language, after Shona.
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Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, which in turn is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family.
Native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people are mostly to be found in the African country of Niger and in the north of Nigeria, but the language is widely used as a lingua franca (similar to Swahili in East Africa) in a much larger swathe of West Africa (Accra, Abidjan, Dakar, Lomé, Cotonou, Bamako, Conakry, Ouagadougou, etc.) and Central Africa (Douala, Yaoundé, Maroua, Garoua, N'djaména, Bangui, Libreville, etc.), particularly amongst Muslims.
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Igbo is a language spoken in Nigeria by around 20-25 million people, the Igbo, especially in the southeastern region once identified as Biafra and parts of Southsouthern region of Nigeria.
Igbo is both spoken and written language mainly in southeastern Nigeria but this usage also extends beyond these confines to southsouthern Nigeria covering some parts of Rivers and Delta States where the Ikweres, Anioma and others are geographically situated.
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Kirundi (also written Rundi) is a Bantu language
spoken by some 6 million people in Burundi and adjacent parts of Tanzania and Congo-Kinshasa, as well as in Uganda. 84% of the speakers are Hutu, 15% are Tutsi and 1% are Twa.
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Kituba is a widely used lingua franca in Central Africa. It is based on Kikongo, a family of closely related
Bantu languages
(some of which are not mutually intelligible). It is an official language in Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa.
Sometimes Kituba is called a creole language but this is not entirely accurate, because it lacks the distinction between superstrate and substrate influence that is typical of creole development.
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Luganda, sometimes known as Ganda, is a major language of Uganda, spoken by over ten million people mainly in Southern Uganda which includes the Ugandan capital Kampala. It belongs to the
Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family.
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Mòoré language (also Mooré, Moré, Moshi, Mossi, Moore or More) is a tonal language spoken primarily in Burkina Faso by the Mossi (or Moshe), closely related and mutually intelligible with the Dagbani language spoken in northern Ghana. It is spoken by approximately 5 million people in the country plus 50,000 others in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Togo. Dialects of the language include Saremdé, Taolendé, Yaadré, Ouagadougou, Yaande, Zaore and Yana.
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Shona (or chiShona) is a Bantu language,
native to the Shona people of Zimbabwe and southern Zambia; the term is also used to identify peoples who speak one of the Shona language dialects, namely Zezuru, Karanga, Manyika, Ndau and Korekore. Shona is an official language of Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and English. Shona speakers comprise more than 80% of Zimbabwe's population and number about 6,225,000. Shona is also spoken by a substantial number of people in Mozambique. Other countries that host Shona language speakers are Zambia and Botswana. The total number of Shona speakers is at least 7,000,000.
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Swahili (called Kiswahili in the language itself) is the first language of the Swahili people (Waswahili), who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language,[2] Swahili is a lingua franca of much of East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a national or official language of four nations, and is the only language of African origin among the official working languages of the African Union.
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Twi, specifically Ashanti Twi, is a language spoken in Ghana by about 15 million people. It is one of the three mutually intelligible dialects of the Akan language, the others being Akuapem Twi and Fante, which belong to the Kwa language family. Twi is spoken in the Ashanti Region and in parts of the Eastern, Western, Central, Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions of Ghana.
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Complete Language Instruction
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