After rebounding by a revised 3,2% in the second quarter of 2019, activity in the South African economy slipped by 0,6% in the third quarter. Swahili is the most spoken language in Africa, with over 100 million speakers. Here are the language origins of the 100 most spoken languages: Indo-European languages have the widest spread worldwide. Arabic (More Than 170 million Speakers) Arabic is the most widespread official language in the African continent and the second most spoken language in Africa. English is the sixth most common home language, with 8.1% of people speaking it at home. The languages in South Africa are just as important as any other factor in understanding the essence of the country itself. ... 2019 Two ways to … Fon and Yoruba (most common vernaculars in south), tribal languages (at least six major ones in north). It is a Bantu language believed to have originated from other languages, mainly Arabic, due to historical interactions between Arabs from the Middle East and East Africans. 1 SWAHILI. Swahili is one of the most spoken languages in East Africa. IsiZulu is South Africa's most spoken language. IsiZulu is by far the most spoken language in SA. South Africa - South Africa - Languages: The Black African population is heterogeneous, falling mainly into four linguistic categories. Interestingly, there are actually 1,526 Niger-Congo languages altogether, though only 12 are represented here. Most of them live in Portugal and Brazil, the largest country in the Portuguese-speaking world, but also in some countries in Southern Africa. POPULATION BY LANGUAGE MOST SPOKEN AT HOME INTEREST IN NEWS STATISTICS Population 57m Internet penetration 54% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% isiZulu isiXhosa Afrikaans Sepedi Setswana English 24 17 12 9 9 8 Note. It is the most spoken language in Africa. In South Africa, it is given official status with 10 other languages. This is … 2. Japanese. Botswana: Setswana (national language with minor differences in dialects), English is the official business language and it is widely spoken in urban areas. As in Brazil lives more than half the population of South America, Portuguese is the most common language on the continent. According to Ethnologue, the language family contains over 3 billion speakers in total. When data is available, the languages spoken in each country are broken down according to the percent of the total population speaking each language as a first language. Japanese is the official language of Japan. Stats Biz – November 2019. For those countries without available data, languages are listed in rank order based on prevalence, starting with the most-spoken language. Mandarin Chinese is the world’s most widely spoken language, and South Africa’s government wants more students to speak it. 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