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There are about 2035 languages in africa(Batibo, 2003) Priority 3
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Shouldn't this article be called African languages (plural)? Strangeloop (talk) 22:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Besides, there are already many pages that are linking to African Languages instead (which is a redirect to African language at present). But now the existence of that page poses a problem if we are going to move this one. And by just plain copy-pasting the text, the history of this page will be gone. Anyone suggestions on how to solve this?
Wow that was fast! Thanks! - Strangeloop (talk) 10:36, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I created a map and added it to the article. I will adjust the text soon; on the map, I divided Niger-Congo in A and B to show the size of the Bantoid branch. - Strangeloop (talk) 12:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I replaced the article with a major rewrite Mustafaa and I have been working on some time ago. There is still very much that remains to be done. I'll add a to do list here in a minute. — mark ✎ 12:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm trying to gather information about the situation of African languages itself on Wikimedia projects. For this I created a page on meta. I'm inviting you to indicate your knowledge about African languages itself, and possibly to help out with collecting some stats and adding links. Thanks, G-u-a-k-@ 12:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to start a debate about a WP style for the names of African languages, including capitalisation. Currently WP articles may refer to: Swahili, Kiswahili, kiSwahili, KiSwahili; or Ndebele, Sindebele, isiNdebele and sinDebele; etc. Redirects help, but its very confusing for the casual reader and hopeless for Wiki search.
My own (tentative) feeling is that, when writing in English, we should follow the English capitalisation rules, thus French not français, and German language, not deutsche Sprache: so Sindebele not isiNdebele. The language's own name(s) for itself could then follow in brackets, as with placenames. But I'm sure there will be lots of strong opinion about this... JackyR 00:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Forms like Setswana, Sindebele (capitalised like that) should be favoured except where (eg Zulu) there is an established Eng lang version.
Distinctions between languages and cultures should be maintained. Words like 'Bantu' should NEVER be used as shorthand for a race.
Guinnog 17:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm somewhat late to the party, but I, too, basically agree with what has been said. Use whatever terms are most common for article names. Expand on the name in the article itself, if needed (at the very least, mention the native name). JackyR, I think it is a good initiative to try to get some consistency in this area.
There is one thing I would like to add: be not too dependent on the Ethnologue (this is especially an issue in this field, as not many people have access to offline sources on African languages). The Ethnologue is a great resource overall, but it shouldn't be treated as a primary source. Thus, to give a recent example, when it says that Ekoti is called Koti —thereby omitting the noun class prefix—, it deviates from most publications on that language (scholarly and otherwise, in English as well as Portuguese), in which it is usually called Ekoti. My position is that we should stick to Ekoti in such a case, because that is the most common term. And on a related issue: these are precisely the cases where the Google test is notoriously irreliable. Searching a good Africanist database usually gives a far better indication. — mark ✎ 21:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
"Established English" names are not so simple. For example, the South African government generally uses prefixed forms in English publications (isiXhosa, siZulu, siNdebele, or possibly IsiXhosa, etc.) Also, established among whom? How many people outside of Africa have heard of tshiVenda? I call it "Venda", but most people who speak about it probably also speak it, or are experts, especially outside Africa and so are more likely to call it tshiVenda. However, I definitely support:
Micheal lives in Cape-Town, so it's not too surprising that he's never heard anyone calling it "Tshivenda". It's like an Ethiopian claiming he's never heard anyone calling Mandarin "
Putonghua".
-
User:ZyXoas
12:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
On the capitalisation issue: I don't think the "look like English" works here. I can handle SiNdebele or siNdebele (my preferred) but I think Sindebele looks wrong and is misleading. -- 대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
'Zulu' is by far the more common term in English for the language, and is the Wikipedia standard for now. Languages though are alive, and 'isiZulu' is in the process of being 'stolen' by English, and as is pointed out elsewhere is already quite widely accepted in South African English. Wikipedia though should use the more standard 'Zulu'. The same applies to the other languages. Greenman 23:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
So local Englishes should be the guide. I hope that's not controversial - it's the same as US/C'wealth spelling consensus. I've started a very unscientific survey of usage at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. Please help. Particularly, pls give references for usage, so these can be used in the corresponding articles. Cheers, JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it help to have a language box in each language-article, giving the root and some prefixes? This would help non-African readers understand and search articles effectively. It would also introduce stability, so that even if the title/text of an article go through edit wars, the terms will all still be searchable. Something like (but better...):
language of | se- | |
place of | ba- | Tswana |
person of | mo- | |
people of | bo- |
JackyR 16:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Swahili is a creole of English, Arabic, and other languages. As far as I know it isn't anyone's first languange. While it spoken almost exclusively in Africa, it doesn't seem that much more "African" than Enlish, French, or Dutch.
Swahili has millions and tens of millions of native speakers not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands; I’m a Tanzanian who lives here and so far 9 of 10 people of most people I meet are native Swahili speakers so plz learn to listen to actual people who live here and stop your guess work Nlivataye ( talk) 16:37, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
It was requested that this article be renamed but the procedure outlined at WP:RM#How to request a page move did not appear to be followed, and consensus could not be determined. Please request a move again with proper procedure if there is still a desire for the page to be moved. Thank you for your time! -- tariqabjotu 03:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
This article was recently renamed from "African languages" to "Language of Africa". The brief discussion regarding the naming of this article (at the top of this page) supported the name "African languages", so I have renamed it accordingly. I do not see the rationale for taking this issue to Wikipedia:Requested moves (per the above suggestion) when it can be adequately discussed here.-- Ezeu 18:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I enlivened links for these terms in #5 of Mark's to-do list. The national language article needs some significant revisions, and if anyone works on this issue for this article, maybe they might want to add some copy to that one too. Probably also with official language. There is another category of possible use to this subject for the African languages article, and that is regional language. -- A12n 04:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that we should split an article of Languages of Africa. By Stooppy.
Is it time to remove the proposal? (Since it has neither had much support nor further clarification.) Not sure on procedures. -- A12n 11:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I think a split along the lines of 'Colonial Languages of Africa' versus 'Indigenous Languages of Africa' would make more sense. (Perhaps that's what was originally intended?) But even then, I'm not sure the split is necessary. Scientivore 14:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
The proposed split wasnt backed up by any reasoning or rationale, so Im removing the tag. - by Ste vertigo 23:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion this article does not give a very good overview of African languages. The text provides very little information except that there are four or five classes of language. The maps are far more informative than the text, and yet insufficient. I'd love to look at this article and be able to figure out:
These are interesting suggestions. Personally I've tried to add selected info from time to time, but am aware that the topic is huge and the article, while an excellent start, could use some more fundamental work. I took the liberty of changing your bullets to numbers in order to facilitate discussion of the various points. Here are some thoughts:
Hope this furthers the discussion. -- A12n 12:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC) fredrick douglass
Without falling into the trap of overt political correctness, I propose dumping the rather offensive split about 'colonial languages'. Firstly, a discussion of the role of these 'dirty' 'white' languages is important, and they should not be dismissed with a 'Besides...'. Secondly, there is some obvious hypocrisy in dismissing Afrikaans, a language which, though offensively white in some sense (though most of its speakers are not), at least developed in Africa, while including Arabic, the language of colonial slave traders, eunuch-makers and jihadists from the Arabian peninsula, a region which, if my atlas is younger than the current geological era, is still not in Africa. Afrikaans, it could be argued, developed at least partly like Swahili, with native Khoi, etc., developing the language in union with the Dutch settlers - the only difference being, it seems, that the Arab traders who catalysed the development of Swahili fail to fall in the most offensive group. After all, this most offensive group has a couple of million representatives in Africa, who almost count as human. Message: though it is perhaps inevitable to a degree, racial hypocrisy of a leftist kind seems to have infected the article. A more objective representation could be in order. I suggest that the list either incorporates all the 'colonial' languages fairly, or excludes Arabic as a non-indigenous language too, while including Afrikaans. That would at least be consistent. After all, English is also not just a superficial language in Africa - there are a couple of million first language speakers who have lived in Africa all of their lives, in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya... and similarly for other 'colonial' languages. They do exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.83.99 ( talk) 16:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
The only sober classification of African languages is that of Tucker and Bryan, published in 1956 and 1966. They use about 50 classes, such as the Kru class in West Africa and the Nilotic class in East Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.108.96 ( talk) 13:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Talk about Indo-European languages' arrival in Africa 500 years ago is a sign that Greek in North Africa has been overlooked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.109.137 ( talk) 13:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC) See Ancient Libya, where it is noted that Greek was spoken in North Africa from 630 B.C. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.36.93 ( talk) 14:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Greenberg's alleged "pan-African" features are found only in small parts of Africa or are found elsewhere, outside Africa. The linked articles note that implosives, labial-velar stops, prenasalized consonants and clicks all occur outside Africa. Admittedly, clicks are very rare outside Africa.
Hi everyone, as you all may know Wikimeida is in the midst of its strategic planning process (see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for more information). As part of this process, I have been developing a fact base on Sub-Saharan African languages and their Wikipedias. The purpose of this fact base is to help the Wikimedia community understand the importance of these languages as they develop strategies to expand the reach of Wikimedia worldwide as well as to discuss the specific barriers to growth of these language projects. If any of you are also editors of any of the Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias, I would really appreciate it if you took some time to look at what I've put together and make any changes or additions that you thought were appropriate. It would be especially great if anyone had some thoughts or ideas to add to the section on barriers to growth Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias. I want to make sure that we have the most accurate information possible to inform the strategic plan as it is developed. This is the link http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reach/Regional_Analysis/Sub-Saharan_Africa Thanks!!!! Sarah476 ( talk) 22:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
The figures for the number of Amharic speakers is definitely out of date and too low. There are about 85 million people in Ethiopia today, at least 30% are native Amharic speakers, and at least another 30% (everyone with an education or living in towns and cities) speak Amharic as a second language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmus Sonderriis ( talk • contribs) 16:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I returned to the old map. It's cartoonish, but at least it's obviously cartoonish. The new map is just wrong: Khartoum is uninhabited, the only languages in N Sudan are Nubian and Beja, etc. It some cases it's due to bad copy: the Egyptian population has been moved from the Nile to the open desert. But in other cases the original map is worse: Madagascar is largely uninhabited, for example, but the western Sahara is inhabited. Best IMO to stick to the old map until we can create something decent. — kwami ( talk) 02:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
In my understanding, the major non-Bantu language phylum in Southern Africa is commonly referred to as Khoisan, whereas this article uses Khoe. The broader Khoisan family is sometimes called Khoesan, but even in this instance, the link should be to the phylum rather than the Khoe sub-brach. 94.174.122.25 ( talk) 16:49, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
There are several types of problems with naming "six traditional language families represented in Africa":
-- dab (𒁳) 14:12, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
as usual, people started edit-warring without bothering to recognize the comments made on talk. I have no problem with describing Afro-Asiatic as "a language family of Africa", as long as it is understood that this doesn't mean it is exclusive to Africa. Same goes for Austronesian and Indo-European. Afro-Asiatic is different from Austronesian and Indo-European insasmuch as it has branches which are exclusive to Africa (viz. Cushitic, Chadic, Berber). These branches are indeed "language families of Africa" in the more narrow sense, just like Nilo-Saharan, Khoi-San and Niger-Congo, i.e. families which are exclusive to Africa. What I was trying to express in the map legend is that Semitic is known to be intrusive to Africa, while the other branches of AA are not. Semitic is intrusive to Africa even if the AA Urheimat was in Africa: everyone came from Africa ultimately. The point is that Proto-Semitic developed in Asia, even if its predecessor, Proto-Afro-Asiatic, may or may not have developed in Africa. -- dab (𒁳) 09:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
As of now (12/15/19), and since at least as far back as 10/18/19, the article starts with "The languages of Africa are divided into six major language families" but this followed by only 5 bulleted families. I have no idea how many there are, but for now I'm changing 'six' to 'five' for consistency. If anyone knows better, please edit. Niccast ( talk) 02:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
The 'afro-asiatic language group' is a topic of debate among different schools of linguistics. I thought Wikipedia was only to publish established facts and not topics that are still under academic/scholarly debate? Help me understand. I raise this concern because the african language map appears to be inaccurate under strict scientific scrutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.104.35.83 ( talk) 21:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
In the section on Number of Speakers, I earlier added the language Shilha, gave the number of speakers as 14.000.000 as according to ethnologue and listed it as an official language in Morocco, per their constitution which has Berber as one of their official languages. Now the problem is that someone else has added Berber to the list, and changed Shilha to not being official anywhere. This is problematic because Berber is arguably group of languages, and not one single language. Shilha is perhaps the largest berber language in Morocco (though not close to 14.000.000 in that country), but their official languages do not include a specific Berber language. Not sure what to do. I would like to show that Berber languages have official status in Morocco, but I'm hesitant to add a language to the list that does not have a calculated number of speakers etc. For now, I'll start by removing the newly added languages with less than a million native speakers, but I need advice on the Berber-thing. -- TheEsb ( talk) 22:37, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
I am updating this deadlink: 25 ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20120502204211/http://www.bbportuguese.com/the-future-of-portuguese.html
Our previous website BBPortuguese.com was merged into TheTranslationCompany.com, so I have replaced the web.archive.org page address used in the reference area of "Languages of Africa" with our new page with the very same content: https://thetranslationcompany.com/resources/language-country/portuguese-language/portuguese-language/future-portuguese.htm
Please let me know if you have any suggestions or concerns regarding this edit.
Sincerely,
Luciano Oliveira BBPortuguese & TTC Founder
Luciano.nyc ( talk) 22:57, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
As sign languages are proven time and time again and are without a doubt natural human languages, their inclusion in this article is paramount. Classing them in a subsection without visibility is demoting these languages, of which there are hundreds found across the continent. The opening of the article as well as the map on the right should include information on the major sign language families (Francosign, Paget Gorman Sign System, Arab Sign, &c.; "does not include sign languages"). As well, to you Soupforone sign languages as with other languages including oral and tactile are equally spoken. Without including them up front and in the intro, it is painting a false picture of the linguistic scene across Africa; in short, it is misleading to not include sign languages in equal and proper ways. -- Danachos ( talk) 19:04, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
A spoken language is a language produced by articulated sounds as opposed to a written language. It thus usually denotes an oral/vocal language produced through the vocal tract. The figure in the lead on the 3,000+ languages spoken natively in Africa specifically pertains to the oral/vocal languages, as do the major language families they are divided into [4]. Therefore, the sign/non-vocal language families should not be confused with the enumerated spoken language families, nor should the language isolates. This is why both are instead noted separately in the paragraph immediately below that (which is still in the lead, just not jumbled with the spoken/vocal languages). As to the map, it too pertains specifically to the spoken/vocal language families and is captioned accordingly. Spoken implies speech i.e., vocal/oral languages. Soupforone ( talk) 02:06, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Bambara? It's called a "lingua franca", so why it's not in this article?
And also wolof
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Isn't it over 100 million?-- occono ( talk) 04:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
So, Africa has about 1.216 BILLION citizens. If you add up the totals on the section "Number of speakers", it totals out to roughly maybe 300 or 400 million as a ballpark figure. What do the other billion inhabitants of Africa speak? Five thousand other languages? Mostly 100 languages and dialects? This table seems misleading and/or significantly incomplete. Any ideas how to best deal with this? Leave it as is? Move it to user space or talk space? I hope this is a constructive critique. Thanks for reading this. Michael Ten ( talk) 06:01, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
The purpose of this was not to subordinate the languages of Africa to Africa's colonial past.
Quite the reverse: the purpose is to remind people arriving at those other articles and viewing Africa through one of those small lens that there's a larger lens available (this article here)—one which considers Africa as a whole, and not as someone else's patchwork quilt.
Very few of these articles link to Languages of Africa in their lead sections, so the normal pathway to broadening does not function in this particular context.
I'm not wedded to this. If the consensus find this more annoying that useful, you'll get no complaints from me over reversion.
But I honestly do think Africa should take pride in the big picture, and not worry about which side of these mutual references gains the upper hand, and trust that the colonial legacy of seeing this through the default lens of colonial history will someday fade (sooner rather than later, in so far as Wikipedia illuminates the path). — MaxEnt 13:02, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
There no info regarding Mali langugaes on this article Omda4wady ( talk) 11:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
See https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/gvxo6n/why_so_few_language_language_families_in_africa/fsrptbx/ ― Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 00:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
@ HJ72JH: per WP:BRD, you are meant to discuss the bold edit that was reverted (regardless of its merit). This is particularly relevant when your edit is reverted by two different editors. M.Bitton ( talk) 00:39, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Afrikaans is a colonial language brought to Africa through colonisation and it is not an indigenous language.That's incorrect. There was no such thing as Afrikaans until the Dutch brought by settlers in South Africa evolved into it there among people who lived there. And it is the native language today of millions of Africans. Also, I haven't seen you take issue with Arabic. Largoplazo ( talk) 00:58, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Regardless of its Dutch provenance, the language known as Afrikaans originated in Africa and has been spoken as a native language by generations of AfricansDo you agree with this? M.Bitton ( talk) 00:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
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There are about 2035 languages in africa(Batibo, 2003) Priority 3
|
Shouldn't this article be called African languages (plural)? Strangeloop (talk) 22:33, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Besides, there are already many pages that are linking to African Languages instead (which is a redirect to African language at present). But now the existence of that page poses a problem if we are going to move this one. And by just plain copy-pasting the text, the history of this page will be gone. Anyone suggestions on how to solve this?
Wow that was fast! Thanks! - Strangeloop (talk) 10:36, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I created a map and added it to the article. I will adjust the text soon; on the map, I divided Niger-Congo in A and B to show the size of the Bantoid branch. - Strangeloop (talk) 12:17, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I replaced the article with a major rewrite Mustafaa and I have been working on some time ago. There is still very much that remains to be done. I'll add a to do list here in a minute. — mark ✎ 12:15, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm trying to gather information about the situation of African languages itself on Wikimedia projects. For this I created a page on meta. I'm inviting you to indicate your knowledge about African languages itself, and possibly to help out with collecting some stats and adding links. Thanks, G-u-a-k-@ 12:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to start a debate about a WP style for the names of African languages, including capitalisation. Currently WP articles may refer to: Swahili, Kiswahili, kiSwahili, KiSwahili; or Ndebele, Sindebele, isiNdebele and sinDebele; etc. Redirects help, but its very confusing for the casual reader and hopeless for Wiki search.
My own (tentative) feeling is that, when writing in English, we should follow the English capitalisation rules, thus French not français, and German language, not deutsche Sprache: so Sindebele not isiNdebele. The language's own name(s) for itself could then follow in brackets, as with placenames. But I'm sure there will be lots of strong opinion about this... JackyR 00:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Forms like Setswana, Sindebele (capitalised like that) should be favoured except where (eg Zulu) there is an established Eng lang version.
Distinctions between languages and cultures should be maintained. Words like 'Bantu' should NEVER be used as shorthand for a race.
Guinnog 17:29, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm somewhat late to the party, but I, too, basically agree with what has been said. Use whatever terms are most common for article names. Expand on the name in the article itself, if needed (at the very least, mention the native name). JackyR, I think it is a good initiative to try to get some consistency in this area.
There is one thing I would like to add: be not too dependent on the Ethnologue (this is especially an issue in this field, as not many people have access to offline sources on African languages). The Ethnologue is a great resource overall, but it shouldn't be treated as a primary source. Thus, to give a recent example, when it says that Ekoti is called Koti —thereby omitting the noun class prefix—, it deviates from most publications on that language (scholarly and otherwise, in English as well as Portuguese), in which it is usually called Ekoti. My position is that we should stick to Ekoti in such a case, because that is the most common term. And on a related issue: these are precisely the cases where the Google test is notoriously irreliable. Searching a good Africanist database usually gives a far better indication. — mark ✎ 21:16, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
"Established English" names are not so simple. For example, the South African government generally uses prefixed forms in English publications (isiXhosa, siZulu, siNdebele, or possibly IsiXhosa, etc.) Also, established among whom? How many people outside of Africa have heard of tshiVenda? I call it "Venda", but most people who speak about it probably also speak it, or are experts, especially outside Africa and so are more likely to call it tshiVenda. However, I definitely support:
Micheal lives in Cape-Town, so it's not too surprising that he's never heard anyone calling it "Tshivenda". It's like an Ethiopian claiming he's never heard anyone calling Mandarin "
Putonghua".
-
User:ZyXoas
12:06, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
On the capitalisation issue: I don't think the "look like English" works here. I can handle SiNdebele or siNdebele (my preferred) but I think Sindebele looks wrong and is misleading. -- 대조 | Talk 16:51, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
'Zulu' is by far the more common term in English for the language, and is the Wikipedia standard for now. Languages though are alive, and 'isiZulu' is in the process of being 'stolen' by English, and as is pointed out elsewhere is already quite widely accepted in South African English. Wikipedia though should use the more standard 'Zulu'. The same applies to the other languages. Greenman 23:33, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
So local Englishes should be the guide. I hope that's not controversial - it's the same as US/C'wealth spelling consensus. I've started a very unscientific survey of usage at User:JackyR/African language names - current usage. Please help. Particularly, pls give references for usage, so these can be used in the corresponding articles. Cheers, JackyR 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Would it help to have a language box in each language-article, giving the root and some prefixes? This would help non-African readers understand and search articles effectively. It would also introduce stability, so that even if the title/text of an article go through edit wars, the terms will all still be searchable. Something like (but better...):
language of | se- | |
place of | ba- | Tswana |
person of | mo- | |
people of | bo- |
JackyR 16:45, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Swahili is a creole of English, Arabic, and other languages. As far as I know it isn't anyone's first languange. While it spoken almost exclusively in Africa, it doesn't seem that much more "African" than Enlish, French, or Dutch.
Swahili has millions and tens of millions of native speakers not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands; I’m a Tanzanian who lives here and so far 9 of 10 people of most people I meet are native Swahili speakers so plz learn to listen to actual people who live here and stop your guess work Nlivataye ( talk) 16:37, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
It was requested that this article be renamed but the procedure outlined at WP:RM#How to request a page move did not appear to be followed, and consensus could not be determined. Please request a move again with proper procedure if there is still a desire for the page to be moved. Thank you for your time! -- tariqabjotu 03:32, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
This article was recently renamed from "African languages" to "Language of Africa". The brief discussion regarding the naming of this article (at the top of this page) supported the name "African languages", so I have renamed it accordingly. I do not see the rationale for taking this issue to Wikipedia:Requested moves (per the above suggestion) when it can be adequately discussed here.-- Ezeu 18:56, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I enlivened links for these terms in #5 of Mark's to-do list. The national language article needs some significant revisions, and if anyone works on this issue for this article, maybe they might want to add some copy to that one too. Probably also with official language. There is another category of possible use to this subject for the African languages article, and that is regional language. -- A12n 04:07, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that we should split an article of Languages of Africa. By Stooppy.
Is it time to remove the proposal? (Since it has neither had much support nor further clarification.) Not sure on procedures. -- A12n 11:32, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I think a split along the lines of 'Colonial Languages of Africa' versus 'Indigenous Languages of Africa' would make more sense. (Perhaps that's what was originally intended?) But even then, I'm not sure the split is necessary. Scientivore 14:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
The proposed split wasnt backed up by any reasoning or rationale, so Im removing the tag. - by Ste vertigo 23:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opinion this article does not give a very good overview of African languages. The text provides very little information except that there are four or five classes of language. The maps are far more informative than the text, and yet insufficient. I'd love to look at this article and be able to figure out:
These are interesting suggestions. Personally I've tried to add selected info from time to time, but am aware that the topic is huge and the article, while an excellent start, could use some more fundamental work. I took the liberty of changing your bullets to numbers in order to facilitate discussion of the various points. Here are some thoughts:
Hope this furthers the discussion. -- A12n 12:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC) fredrick douglass
Without falling into the trap of overt political correctness, I propose dumping the rather offensive split about 'colonial languages'. Firstly, a discussion of the role of these 'dirty' 'white' languages is important, and they should not be dismissed with a 'Besides...'. Secondly, there is some obvious hypocrisy in dismissing Afrikaans, a language which, though offensively white in some sense (though most of its speakers are not), at least developed in Africa, while including Arabic, the language of colonial slave traders, eunuch-makers and jihadists from the Arabian peninsula, a region which, if my atlas is younger than the current geological era, is still not in Africa. Afrikaans, it could be argued, developed at least partly like Swahili, with native Khoi, etc., developing the language in union with the Dutch settlers - the only difference being, it seems, that the Arab traders who catalysed the development of Swahili fail to fall in the most offensive group. After all, this most offensive group has a couple of million representatives in Africa, who almost count as human. Message: though it is perhaps inevitable to a degree, racial hypocrisy of a leftist kind seems to have infected the article. A more objective representation could be in order. I suggest that the list either incorporates all the 'colonial' languages fairly, or excludes Arabic as a non-indigenous language too, while including Afrikaans. That would at least be consistent. After all, English is also not just a superficial language in Africa - there are a couple of million first language speakers who have lived in Africa all of their lives, in South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Kenya... and similarly for other 'colonial' languages. They do exist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.241.83.99 ( talk) 16:14, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
The only sober classification of African languages is that of Tucker and Bryan, published in 1956 and 1966. They use about 50 classes, such as the Kru class in West Africa and the Nilotic class in East Africa. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.108.96 ( talk) 13:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Talk about Indo-European languages' arrival in Africa 500 years ago is a sign that Greek in North Africa has been overlooked. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.109.137 ( talk) 13:18, 3 September 2009 (UTC) See Ancient Libya, where it is noted that Greek was spoken in North Africa from 630 B.C. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.105.36.93 ( talk) 14:38, 3 September 2009 (UTC)
Greenberg's alleged "pan-African" features are found only in small parts of Africa or are found elsewhere, outside Africa. The linked articles note that implosives, labial-velar stops, prenasalized consonants and clicks all occur outside Africa. Admittedly, clicks are very rare outside Africa.
Hi everyone, as you all may know Wikimeida is in the midst of its strategic planning process (see http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page for more information). As part of this process, I have been developing a fact base on Sub-Saharan African languages and their Wikipedias. The purpose of this fact base is to help the Wikimedia community understand the importance of these languages as they develop strategies to expand the reach of Wikimedia worldwide as well as to discuss the specific barriers to growth of these language projects. If any of you are also editors of any of the Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias, I would really appreciate it if you took some time to look at what I've put together and make any changes or additions that you thought were appropriate. It would be especially great if anyone had some thoughts or ideas to add to the section on barriers to growth Sub-Saharan African language Wikipedias. I want to make sure that we have the most accurate information possible to inform the strategic plan as it is developed. This is the link http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reach/Regional_Analysis/Sub-Saharan_Africa Thanks!!!! Sarah476 ( talk) 22:58, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
The figures for the number of Amharic speakers is definitely out of date and too low. There are about 85 million people in Ethiopia today, at least 30% are native Amharic speakers, and at least another 30% (everyone with an education or living in towns and cities) speak Amharic as a second language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmus Sonderriis ( talk • contribs) 16:19, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
I returned to the old map. It's cartoonish, but at least it's obviously cartoonish. The new map is just wrong: Khartoum is uninhabited, the only languages in N Sudan are Nubian and Beja, etc. It some cases it's due to bad copy: the Egyptian population has been moved from the Nile to the open desert. But in other cases the original map is worse: Madagascar is largely uninhabited, for example, but the western Sahara is inhabited. Best IMO to stick to the old map until we can create something decent. — kwami ( talk) 02:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
In my understanding, the major non-Bantu language phylum in Southern Africa is commonly referred to as Khoisan, whereas this article uses Khoe. The broader Khoisan family is sometimes called Khoesan, but even in this instance, the link should be to the phylum rather than the Khoe sub-brach. 94.174.122.25 ( talk) 16:49, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
There are several types of problems with naming "six traditional language families represented in Africa":
-- dab (𒁳) 14:12, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
as usual, people started edit-warring without bothering to recognize the comments made on talk. I have no problem with describing Afro-Asiatic as "a language family of Africa", as long as it is understood that this doesn't mean it is exclusive to Africa. Same goes for Austronesian and Indo-European. Afro-Asiatic is different from Austronesian and Indo-European insasmuch as it has branches which are exclusive to Africa (viz. Cushitic, Chadic, Berber). These branches are indeed "language families of Africa" in the more narrow sense, just like Nilo-Saharan, Khoi-San and Niger-Congo, i.e. families which are exclusive to Africa. What I was trying to express in the map legend is that Semitic is known to be intrusive to Africa, while the other branches of AA are not. Semitic is intrusive to Africa even if the AA Urheimat was in Africa: everyone came from Africa ultimately. The point is that Proto-Semitic developed in Asia, even if its predecessor, Proto-Afro-Asiatic, may or may not have developed in Africa. -- dab (𒁳) 09:29, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
As of now (12/15/19), and since at least as far back as 10/18/19, the article starts with "The languages of Africa are divided into six major language families" but this followed by only 5 bulleted families. I have no idea how many there are, but for now I'm changing 'six' to 'five' for consistency. If anyone knows better, please edit. Niccast ( talk) 02:44, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
The 'afro-asiatic language group' is a topic of debate among different schools of linguistics. I thought Wikipedia was only to publish established facts and not topics that are still under academic/scholarly debate? Help me understand. I raise this concern because the african language map appears to be inaccurate under strict scientific scrutiny. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.104.35.83 ( talk) 21:15, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
In the section on Number of Speakers, I earlier added the language Shilha, gave the number of speakers as 14.000.000 as according to ethnologue and listed it as an official language in Morocco, per their constitution which has Berber as one of their official languages. Now the problem is that someone else has added Berber to the list, and changed Shilha to not being official anywhere. This is problematic because Berber is arguably group of languages, and not one single language. Shilha is perhaps the largest berber language in Morocco (though not close to 14.000.000 in that country), but their official languages do not include a specific Berber language. Not sure what to do. I would like to show that Berber languages have official status in Morocco, but I'm hesitant to add a language to the list that does not have a calculated number of speakers etc. For now, I'll start by removing the newly added languages with less than a million native speakers, but I need advice on the Berber-thing. -- TheEsb ( talk) 22:37, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Hi,
I am updating this deadlink: 25 ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20120502204211/http://www.bbportuguese.com/the-future-of-portuguese.html
Our previous website BBPortuguese.com was merged into TheTranslationCompany.com, so I have replaced the web.archive.org page address used in the reference area of "Languages of Africa" with our new page with the very same content: https://thetranslationcompany.com/resources/language-country/portuguese-language/portuguese-language/future-portuguese.htm
Please let me know if you have any suggestions or concerns regarding this edit.
Sincerely,
Luciano Oliveira BBPortuguese & TTC Founder
Luciano.nyc ( talk) 22:57, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
As sign languages are proven time and time again and are without a doubt natural human languages, their inclusion in this article is paramount. Classing them in a subsection without visibility is demoting these languages, of which there are hundreds found across the continent. The opening of the article as well as the map on the right should include information on the major sign language families (Francosign, Paget Gorman Sign System, Arab Sign, &c.; "does not include sign languages"). As well, to you Soupforone sign languages as with other languages including oral and tactile are equally spoken. Without including them up front and in the intro, it is painting a false picture of the linguistic scene across Africa; in short, it is misleading to not include sign languages in equal and proper ways. -- Danachos ( talk) 19:04, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
A spoken language is a language produced by articulated sounds as opposed to a written language. It thus usually denotes an oral/vocal language produced through the vocal tract. The figure in the lead on the 3,000+ languages spoken natively in Africa specifically pertains to the oral/vocal languages, as do the major language families they are divided into [4]. Therefore, the sign/non-vocal language families should not be confused with the enumerated spoken language families, nor should the language isolates. This is why both are instead noted separately in the paragraph immediately below that (which is still in the lead, just not jumbled with the spoken/vocal languages). As to the map, it too pertains specifically to the spoken/vocal language families and is captioned accordingly. Spoken implies speech i.e., vocal/oral languages. Soupforone ( talk) 02:06, 16 October 2016 (UTC)
Bambara? It's called a "lingua franca", so why it's not in this article?
And also wolof
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Isn't it over 100 million?-- occono ( talk) 04:44, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
So, Africa has about 1.216 BILLION citizens. If you add up the totals on the section "Number of speakers", it totals out to roughly maybe 300 or 400 million as a ballpark figure. What do the other billion inhabitants of Africa speak? Five thousand other languages? Mostly 100 languages and dialects? This table seems misleading and/or significantly incomplete. Any ideas how to best deal with this? Leave it as is? Move it to user space or talk space? I hope this is a constructive critique. Thanks for reading this. Michael Ten ( talk) 06:01, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
The purpose of this was not to subordinate the languages of Africa to Africa's colonial past.
Quite the reverse: the purpose is to remind people arriving at those other articles and viewing Africa through one of those small lens that there's a larger lens available (this article here)—one which considers Africa as a whole, and not as someone else's patchwork quilt.
Very few of these articles link to Languages of Africa in their lead sections, so the normal pathway to broadening does not function in this particular context.
I'm not wedded to this. If the consensus find this more annoying that useful, you'll get no complaints from me over reversion.
But I honestly do think Africa should take pride in the big picture, and not worry about which side of these mutual references gains the upper hand, and trust that the colonial legacy of seeing this through the default lens of colonial history will someday fade (sooner rather than later, in so far as Wikipedia illuminates the path). — MaxEnt 13:02, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
There no info regarding Mali langugaes on this article Omda4wady ( talk) 11:03, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
See https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/gvxo6n/why_so_few_language_language_families_in_africa/fsrptbx/ ― Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 00:54, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
@ HJ72JH: per WP:BRD, you are meant to discuss the bold edit that was reverted (regardless of its merit). This is particularly relevant when your edit is reverted by two different editors. M.Bitton ( talk) 00:39, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Afrikaans is a colonial language brought to Africa through colonisation and it is not an indigenous language.That's incorrect. There was no such thing as Afrikaans until the Dutch brought by settlers in South Africa evolved into it there among people who lived there. And it is the native language today of millions of Africans. Also, I haven't seen you take issue with Arabic. Largoplazo ( talk) 00:58, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Regardless of its Dutch provenance, the language known as Afrikaans originated in Africa and has been spoken as a native language by generations of AfricansDo you agree with this? M.Bitton ( talk) 00:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)