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Languages in South Africa

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Overview

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It’s not for nothing that South Africa is called the Rainbow Nation.  This is a country of incredible racial and religious diversity, and this variety is also evident in its linguistic traditions.  The country has a total of 11 official languages and at least 8 national languages.  And there are dozens of unofficial European, African, and Asian languages spoken here as well.

Official languages

Two of the country’s 11 officially recognized languages are of the Indo-European family (Afrikaans and English), while the others belong to the Bantu family of languages (Ndebele, Sotho, Swati, Northern Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Zulu, and Xhosa).  Of these, Zulu (23.8%), Xhosa (17.6%) and Afrikaans (13.3%) are the most widely used languages at home, although English is increasingly becoming more popular for commerce and trade.

English

English ranks 6th on a list of the most widely spoken languages at home in South Africa.  It is however, spoken in most of the cities and has an established presence in the medical profession, media, and tourism sector.  It is estimated that at least 45% of the country’s population understands the language, and you should find your medical tourism facility equipped with English speaking staff.  It is South Africa’s lingua franca and is taught in most schools.  It might take some time to get used to South African English on your medical tourism holiday.  It has phonetic similarities with the kind of English spoken in Australia and New Zealand.  It also consists of many words that are sourced from Afrikaans, the African dialects, as well as from Indian languages.

Other Languages

A number of Indian languages are spoken here including Hindi, Tamil, and Gujarati.  Large numbers of migrants from Europe mean that Polish, Portuguese, French, German, and Yiddish are also spoken in the country.  Portuguese is one of the fastest growing non-official languages thanks to migrants from Mozambique and Angola.

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