South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/span> is considered the rainbow nation since it is one of the most ethnically diverse nations on the continent.<\/p>\n

Centuries ago, the country was majorly inhabited by the pastoral Khoikhoi, the hunter-gatherer San, Xhosa, and Zulu, which is the most spoken language in South Africa. For decades, the languages recognised by the constitution included English, European-Dutch, and Afrikaans.<\/p>\n

For many years, most of the local varieties were disregarded, despite being spoken by more than 80% of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

According to the Council for Foreign Relations, the 1996 constitution review gave new official protection to all the country\u2019s major languages.<\/p>\n

So, how many official languages in South Africa are recognised by the constitution?<\/p>\n

11 languages of South Africa<\/strong>
\nThe constitution recognizes 11 SA languages. Initially, the nation had 34 languages, but four Khoesan dialects have become extinct. Out of the remaining 30, 19 are less famous. Here are the most common ones.<\/p>\n

Why English?
\nWhile English is only the fourth biggest language in South Africa, it is still one of the most spoken languages in the world.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It is known as the lingua franca of the world, with over 335 million people speaking it as their first language, and another 450 million as a second, in 101 countries.<\/p>\n

It has become the language of international business, and is the language of the scientific and medical fields, which use English as a basis for much of the terminology.<\/p>\n

But English is far from the world\u2019s biggest language \u2013 that title belongs to Chinese, which have over 1.2 billion native speakers, in 33 countries.<\/p>\n

As South Africa\u2019s biggest trade partner, the department of education saw it fit to officially add Mandarin to the school curriculum in the country from January 2016.<\/p>\n

Chinese is a complex language to categorise, as it is technically a \u201cmacrolanguage\u201d comprising 13 individual languages.<\/p>\n

It has two main sub-groups, namely Mandarin and Cantonese \u2013 the former of which is the primary language of China.<\/p>\n

Similar to Chinese, Arabic is another large macrolanguage, comprising 18 individual languages. There are an estimated 242 million native Arabic speakers in the world.<\/p>\n

Source: News365<\/strong><\/p>\n

In other news – YouTuber Slik Talk Attacks Minnie Dlamini\u2019s Failed Marriage \u2013 VIDEO<\/span><\/h3>\n

Slik Talk<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0drops his first video since 2021 and the money hasn\u2019t made him a nice person.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He goes on a ruthless attack on Minnie and Quinton\u2019s failed marriage. Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa is considered the rainbow nation since it is one of the most ethnically diverse nations on the continent. Centuries ago, the country was majorly inhabited by the pastoral Khoikhoi, the hunter-gatherer San, Xhosa, and Zulu, which is the most spoken language in South Africa. For decades, the languages recognised by the constitution included […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[2243,2244],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-most-spoken-languages","tag-spoken-languages-in-south-africa"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zedtainment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}