The Africa lifestyle (part one): The language ๐
Hi dear travellers friends, it's my delight to be here after a long while. I'm glad I be back here and I will try to be more active, I have also devised a means to achieve that.
Here in this community, I'm going to be introducing the African way of life and living and thus bring the African culture to this beautiful Community.
Africa
As we may know, Africa is the largest continent in the world after Asia, that is to say that Africa is the second largest in both area and population.
Africa has 54 fully recognized countries in it and the most populous among them is Nigeria which has over 211 million population.
This post is going to be in series where I'll introduce Africa to you. It's going to cover the following aspects:
Language | Food |
---|---|
Religion | Marriage/Family |
Dance/Music | Cultural Dressing |
Values/norms | Art |
Education |
I will keep adding to the above table when I have more information to share.
In all I will be focusing more on one of the countries of Nigeria which is also where I am from.
I will do my best to present the topics in simple and interesting ways so that you can benefit from it. If necessary I may include videos in most of them.
So for the first part, I'm going to start with the language.
Language
One of the things that Africa is known for is it's diversity in language. Africa has been estimated to have about 1500-2000 living languages and many of these languages are with their own set of varied dialects.
Below are the list of a 10 countries in Africa with their official languages.
10 countries in Africa and their official languages
Country | Official language |
---|---|
Angola | Portuguese |
Benin | French |
Cameroon | French and English |
Djibouti | French and Arabic |
Egypt | Modern standard Arabic |
Ethiopia | Amharic |
Kenya | Swahili + English |
Mali | French |
Malawi | English |
Tanzania | Swahili and English |
Note that the above languages are just their official languages, there are many other languages spoken by these countries too. For example, south Africa has over 11 official languages and that includes Afrikaans which is the one I've heard mostly from south African friends.
The country with the most spoken language in Africa is Nigeria
Nigeria, the multilingual country
Nigeria alone has over 525 native languages being spoken in the country. Nigeria has 36 states and 371 tribes and all of these speak the over 525 languages.
Leaving your state to another state in Nigeria feels like travelling to a different country because you may not know how to speak the other people's language. But thankfully we were colonized by the British and English is now our official language for communication.
There is also the Nigerian pidgin English for easier communication because most people find it difficult to speak good Grammer so the pidgin English is for simplification.
Even though the English language has been introduced, it is sometimes a challenge to stay in a different place where you do not really understand the language. Most times you will not understand anything when a group discussion is taking place because they will use their language and not English.
Every Nigerian should know how to speak about 3 languages:
- English
- Mother tongue (one of the countries local languages)
- Nigerian pidgin
Knowing those three languages comes natural for us Nigerians.
Communication in English is more popular in the urban areas than in the rural areas. If you visit some rural areas in Nigeria and you speak English, you may be regarded as a foreigner or even a disrespectful person.
They believe that you respect them by greeting them in their own language.
The three basic languages in Nigeria apart from English are spoken by the three main ethnic groups in the country:
Rank | language | |
---|---|---|
2 | Hausa | Over 27,000,000 native speakers |
3 | Yoruba | over 18,850,000 native speakers |
4 | Igbo | Over 24,000,000 native speakers |
Note that the above list of speakers is just an estimate, it can be more or less that amount.
That is how multilingual Nigeria is, even the language that you think it's the same may vary in dialects in another place. For example, just the Igbo language which is also my language has approximately 30 different dialects which can get us confused when we hear them being spoken despite it being the same language. But in all there is a general one that is understood by all and it is called the general Igbo language.
So much difference in languages, most times the varieties in language can be fun, but they can also be embarrassing at times.
If you ever want to travel to an African country, I advice you research and find out the official language of the country and learn it. If you are coming to Nigeria then you should know at least some greetings in one of the three major ethnic languages.
Older ones will value you more if you communicate in their language.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share with you. This is just the first part of the post, I'll keep improving it and the next part will be much better. Next I'll will write on traditional dishes, so please wait expectantly for it.
Gracias por traernos esta recopilaciรณn cultural del continente africano. Africa es un hermoso continente con muchas culturas, costumbres, religiones e idiomas.
Recuerda utilizar imagenes libres de derechos para tus futuros post. Mucho exito gran trabajo.
Hello friend, thank you for this information. I'm happy that you took notice of my post and to give me the necessary corrections. I will be more careful next time
Excellent, interesting and informative. very complete post โค๏ธ๐