Facts abouts African Languages are
More than 2,000 different indigenous languages are spoken in
Africa today. Together with these are external languages not
confined to Africa such as Arabic and the languages brought
by the major colonial master such as English, French and Portuguese.
The most widely spoken African tongues are Kiswahili (100 million
speakers and Hausa (50 million speakers).
The languages of Africa are grouped into four language families:
Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, and Niger-Congo. A language
family is a group of related languages presumably derived from
a common origin; a family is often subdivided into branches
composed of more closely related languages. At least some of
the African linguistic families are believed to have a history
of more than 5,000 years. African languages that belong to different
families are as little alike as English, Turkish, Chinese, and
Navajo, although the disparate tongues may be spoken in the
same locality. Even within a single family, African languages
may be as different in sound and structure as English, Italian,
Russian, and Hindi, all of which are members of the Indo-European
language family. Within a given branch of one family, however,
languages may often be as closely related as German, Dutch,
and Swedish.
Not all the African languages have writing systems, and in
certain tongues the only written literature is a translation
of the Holy Bible and the Quran. Except for Arabic and certain
languages of Ethiopia, the alphabets of most African languages
are based on adaptations of the Roman alphabet and were introduced
by missionaries. A few tribes, notably the Vai in Liberia and
the Bamum in Cameroon, have developed their own syllabic writing
systems.
