Is swahili the Lingua franca of Africa

[Eedaaf]

Have you guys noticed that somalis have influenced a lot of east africa. Easy example is the women clothes baati, that a lot of East africans from Tanzania to Ethiopia wear. While similar clothing exists, it is known that they have gotten it from somalis ( correct me if I am wrong ).

y’a we traded the fabric with many people I was surprised i saw a North African say the baati is native in north africa

 

[reer]

The languages of Africa break down into four large families (phyla), with an additional Austronesian family spoken in Madagascar; the four continental language families are:

• Niger-Congo
• Afroasiatic
• Nilo-Saharan
• Khoisan

Niger-Congo
“Niger-Congo, with approximately 1,350 - 1,650 languages is the largest of the four; it is also the largest language family in the world. The Niger-Congo languages inhabit Western, Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken languages of Africa, Swahili (100 million), Hausa (38 million), Yoruba (20 million), Amharic (20 million), Igbo (21 million), and Fula (13 million) all belong to the Niger-Congo family.”

(I’m not sure why Amharic is categorized as Nilo-Congo but it’s an Afroasiatic, someone should alert Harvard lol)


Afroasiatic
“The next largest family is Afroasiatic with about 200 - 300 member languages in Africa The Afroasiatic languages in Africa are found mainly in the Northern regions of Africa, including: northern Nigeria, southern Niger, Somalia, and in the North African countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, etc.”

Nilo-Saharan
“Next in size is the Nilo-Saharan family with about 80 languages. These occupy Eastern Africa and the North Eastern region of Africa, namely: Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Chad, the Sudan, etc.”


Khoisan
“Last but not least is the Khoisan family with between 40 - 70 members. Believed to be the oldest of the four language families, it is the smallest of the four and is found mainly in Southern Africa.”

The African Language Program at Harvard,

Introduction to African Languages

With anywhere between 1000 and 2000 languages, Africa is home to approximately one-third of the world's languages. The diversity of Africa's languages is evidenced by their populations. In total, there are at least 75 languages in Africa which have more than one million speakers. The rest are...

alp.fas.harvard.edu

View attachment 177675

Languages of the World :: African Languages by Countries

List of official and spoken languages of African countries.

www.nationsonline.org

egypt 100 million
algeria 43 million
sudan 42 million
morocco 36 million
tunisia 11 million
libya 6 million
mauritania 4 million

i have no idea waxaad ka hadleyso. even in uganda they speak luganda and other languages. arabic easily surpasses swahili in numbers of speakers.

 

[Amirah]

egypt 100 million
algeria 43 million
sudan 42 million
morocco 36 million
tunisia 11 million
libya 6 million
mauritania 4 million

i have no idea waxaad ka hadleyso. even in uganda they speak luganda and other languages. arabic easily surpasses swahili in numbers of speakers.

Ok so Harvard is incorrect? Ok someone should tell the #1 Ivy League school in the world they’re wrong and some guy on Sspot is right!

Besides what is it to you anyways? Why do you want Arabic to be the most common language in Africa so badly? I have 2 sources, you have none. Provide a creditable source that contradicts me smh

 

[motivation]

English is, An African from Ghana would more than likely communicate with an African from Botswana in English.

 

[Amirah]

egypt 100 million
algeria 43 million
sudan 42 million
morocco 36 million
tunisia 11 million
libya 6 million
mauritania 4 million

i have no idea waxaad ka hadleyso. even in uganda they speak luganda and other languages. arabic easily surpasses swahili in numbers of speakers.

Btw not all of Egypt or Algeria or Sudan etc speaks Arabic. You just quoted the entire population of those countries as though every single region within it speaks Arabic.

 

[reer]

Ok so Harvard is incorrect? Ok someone should tell the #1 Ivy League school in the world they’re wrong and some guy on Sspot is right!

Besides what is it to you anyways? Why do you want Arabic to be the most common language in Africa so badly? I have 2 sources, you have none. Provide a creditable source that contradicts me smh

100 million swahili speakers as a native tongue? that is a stretch. as a lingua franca like urdu yes. lol list us countriws where swahili is the mother tongue of the majority of the natives. uganda and mozambique dont count

 

[Marquis]

100 million swahili speakers as a native tongue? that is a stretch. as a lingua franca like urdu yes. lol list us countriws where swahili is the mother tongue of the majority of the natives. uganda and mozambique dont count

I'm pretty sure Portuguese is the lingua franca among the diverse people in Mozambique, not Swahili

 

[greyhound stone]

We should all learn English the best language world wide. It's international

 

[pirater]

Do you know the swahili language or have you ever lived with those people? I can't argue with "jiir haan ku weynaaday". Research kibarava swahili dialect.
Learn and gain knowledge before you run your emotions.

so are you going to explain and give sources if you want me to not run with my emotions

 

[Amirah]

100 million swahili speakers as a native tongue? that is a stretch. as a lingua franca like urdu yes. lol list us countriws where swahili is the mother tongue of the majority of the natives. uganda and mozambique dont count

They’re not talking about naive speakers. People can adopt a language you know. They’re talking about the number of people that simply speak Swahili...not only where it’s native only. For example Sudanese are not Arabs yet speak Arabic.

 

[Keo]

A language created by Arabs lol and it’s not spoken in Somalia