How many native speakers of Swahili are there?
Swahili language
The exact number of Swahili speakers, be it native or second-language speakers, is unknown and a matter of debate. Various estimates have been put forward and they vary widely, from 50 million to over 100 million. Swahili serves as a national language of four nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and the DRC. Shikomor, the official language in Comoros and also spoken in Mayotte (), is related to Swahili. Swahili is also one of the working languages of the African Union and officially recognised as a lingua franca of the East African Community. South Africa legalized the teaching of Swahili in South African schools as an optional subject beginning in 2020.
Sinhalese people
The Sinhalese (Sinhala: සිංහල ජාතිය "Sinhala Jathiya", also known as "Hela") are an Indo-Aryan-speaking ethnic group native to the island of Sri Lanka. They constitute about 75% of the Sri Lankan population and number greater than 16.2 million. The Sinhalese identity is based on language, historical heritage and religion. The Sinhalese people speak the Sinhalese language, an Indo-Aryan language, and are predominantly Theravada Buddhists, although a small percentage of Sinhalese follow branches of Christianity. The Sinhalese are mostly found in North Central, Central, South, and West Sri Lanka. According to the 5th century epic poem Mahavamsa, and the Dipavamsa, a 3rd–5th century treatise written in Pali by Buddhist monks of the Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese are descendants of settlers who came to the island in 543 BCE from Sinhapura, in India, led by Prince Vijaya.
From the Sanskrit word Sinhala, meaning literally "of lions". Other Sanskrit meaning is 'Sinha' (lion) + 'la' (blood or heart).
Slovenes
Most Slovenes today live within the borders of the independent Slovenia (2,007,711 est. 2008). In the Slovenian national census of 2002, 1,631,363 people ethnically declared themselves as Slovenes, while 1,723,434 people claimed Slovene as their native language.
Wanda people
The Wanda's native dialect is also called Wanda. Linguists group Wanda with Fipa, Lungu, Nyamwanga, Pimbwe, and Kuulwe as dialects of a single language. Most people also speak some Swahili.
Swahili people
The Swahili people originate from Bantu inhabitants of the coast of Southeast Africa, in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. These Bantu-speaking agriculturalists settled the coast at the outset of the first millennium. Archaeological finds at Fukuchani, on the north-west coast of Zanzibar, indicate a settled agricultural and fishing community from the 6th century CE at the latest. The considerable amount of daub found indicates timber buildings, and shell beads, bead grinders, and iron slag have been found at the site. There is evidence for limited engagement in long-distance trade: a small amount of imported pottery has been found, less than 1% of total pottery finds, mostly from the Gulf and dated to the 5th to 8th century. The similarity to contemporary sites such at Mkokotoni and Dar es Salaam indicate a unified group of communities that developed into the first center of coastal maritime culture. The coastal towns appear to have been engaged in Indian Ocean trade at this early period, and trade rapidly increased in importance and quantity between the mid-8th and the 11th century.
English-speaking world
Estimates that include second language speakers vary greatly, from 470 million to more than 1 billion. David Crystal calculates that, as of 2003, non-native speakers outnumbered native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. When combining native and non-native speakers, English is the most widely spoken language worldwide.
Wichí
The total number of speakers can only be estimated; no reliable figures exist. Comparing several sources, the most probable number is from 40 to 50,000 individuals. The Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) gives a figure of 36,135 for Argentina only. 
In Rosario, the third biggest city of Argentina, there's a community of about 10,000 wichi people, all of them fluent in whichi, and some native speakers. There are even a couple of bilingual primary schools.
Swahili people
The Swahili people (or Waswahili) are an ethnic and cultural group inhabiting East Africa. Members primarily reside on the Swahili coast, in an area encompassing the Zanzibar archipelago, littoral Kenya, the Tanzania seaboard, and northern Mozambique. The name "Swahili" is derived from the Arabic word "Sawāhil" سواحل, meaning "coasts". The Swahili speak the Swahili language, which belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family.
Afrikaans
With about 7 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third-most-spoken language in the country. It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all the 11 official languages of South Africa, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa—the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape—and the first language of 75.8% of Coloured South Africans (4.8 million people), 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million); 4.6% of Asian South Africans (58,000 people), and 1.5% of Black South Africans (600,000 people).
Cutchi-Swahili
Kutchi-Swahili, or Cutchi-Swahili, is a Swahili-based creole spoken among the Indian population of East Africa. It is the native language of some Gujarati families from Zanzibar that have settled in the larger cities of mainland Tanzania and Kenya, and is used as a second language by others of the Indian community. It is derived from the Kutchi language of the Kutch district in Gujarat.
Swahili language
Modern standard Swahili is based on "Kiunguja," the dialect spoken in Zanzibar Town, but there are numerous dialects of Swahili, some of which are mutually unintelligible, such as the following:
Swahili people
The Swahili speak as their native tongue the Swahili language, which is a member of the Bantu subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. Its closest relatives include Comorian spoken on the Comoros Islands, and the Mijikenda language of the Mijikenda people in Kenya.
Amami Ōshima language
The number of competent native speakers is not known, but native speakers are found mostly among old people—as a result of Japan's language policy which suppresses proliferation of minority languages, the younger generations speak mostly Japanese as their first language. Estimates run around 10,000 for the northern variety and 2,000 for the southern (Setouchi) variety.
Germanic languages
The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360-400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 0.3 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 5 million in Germany and 1.7 million in the Netherlands); Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe and Scots, both with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 0.5 million native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.
Sinhalese language
Sinhalese (), known natively as Sinhala (; "siṁhala" ), is the native language of the Sinhalese people, who make up the largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka, numbering about 16 million. Sinhalese is also spoken as a second language by other ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, totalling about four million. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. Sinhalese is written using the Sinhalese script, which is one of the Brahmic scripts, a descendant of the ancient Indian Brahmi script closely related to the Kadamba alphabet.
Machame
Although sometimes lumped with other Chaga languages, Machame is a distinct language (also known as "Kimachame" in Swahili and as "Kimashame" or "Kimashami" in the Machame language itself. For most inhabitants of Machame and Masama (i.e., the Machame "tribe"), including children born and raised in this area, Kimachame is their first language; Swahili and English are learned via formal schooling.
Stereotypes of Africans
Similarly, a common misbelief of the Western world is that Africans speak 'African' and that 'African' is an official language. In reality, African as a language does not exist. There are over 2000 distinct languages currently spoken throughout the African continent, the most common of these being Swahili.
National language
While English and Swahili are official languages, Swahili also has a special status as national language. None of the country's biggest languages (Gikuyu, Luo, Kamba, Kalenjin, etc.) have any explicit legal status on the national level, however the 2010 constitution enjoins the state to "promote and protect the diversity of language of the people of Kenya."
Languages of Argentina
Wichí is an indigenous language spoken by 53,700 people, mainly in Chaco where, along with Kom and Moqoit, it is official "de jure".
Swahili language
Some 80 percent of approximately 49 million Tanzanians speak Swahili in addition to their first languages. The five eastern provinces of the DRC are Swahili-speaking. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese reportedly speak it. Swahili speakers may number 120 to 150 million in total.
Official languages of the United Nations
With between 50 – 100 million speakers, Swahili is lexiconically similar to other eastern Bantu languages such as Comorian which have differing levels of mutual intelligibility. Swahili is already used unofficially in many UN organizations as the United Nations Office at Nairobi, one of the four major UN global offices (in addition to offices in New York City, Vienna, and Geneva), is located in Nairobi, Kenya. The media branch of the UN, UN News (https://news.un.org/), already includes translations into Swahili.
Culture of Sri Lanka
While the Sinhalese people speak Sinhala as their mother tongue, the Tamil people speak Tamil. English is also widely spoken. Sinhala is spoken by about 17 million people in Sri Lanka, more than 14 million of whom are native speakers. It is one of the constitutionally recognized official languages of Sri Lanka, along with Tamil.
Swahili culture
Many claims have been made that Swahili culture emerged from the settlement of Arab merchants with the ruins being called Arab cities and many Swahili self-identifying as descendants of Arabs or Persians. However, more recent opinions believe that the medieval Swahili coastal sites developed locally with the creation of small agricultural and fishing communities that gave rise to the Swahili culture through trade which resulted in an increase in Islamic influence during the twelfth century. Increased contact with the Islamic would then lead to the integration of local African and Arab traditions, creating an indigenous Swahili culture. Yet, a blend of these two interpretations exists with accounts of Arab merchants marrying local women, which created a distinctive Arab-African Swahili culture. The culture appears to have emerged in Kenya and Tanzania and eventually spread to Mozambique.
Kisangani
The city has a heterogeneous population of over 250 ethnic African majorities of which Wagenia and Kumu compose the native population:The main languages used in Kisangani are Lingala and Swahili. French is also widely spoken since it is the official language of the DR Congo (DRC).
Swahili Blonde
Swahili Blonde is an experimental musical project formed in Los Angeles, California in 2009. Founded by former WEAVE! drummer and vocalist Nicole Turley, violinist and bassist Laena Myers-Ionita, Duran Duran bassist John Taylor and multi-instrumentalists Stella Mozgawa and Michael Quinn. Former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist and Turley's now ex-husband, John Frusciante, performs guitar on the band's recordings, and did perform alongside the group at their debut performance, while he was briefly a full-time band member.
Francization
French became the most spoken language in Africa after Arabic and Swahili in 2010. The number of speakers changed very rapidly between 1992 and 2002, with the number of learners of French in sub-Saharan and southeastern Africa increasing by 60.37%, from 22,33 million to 34,56 million people.
Mozambique
The Bantu-group languages of Mozambique that are indigenous to the country vary greatly in their groupings and in some cases are rather poorly appreciated and documented. Apart from its lingua franca uses in the north of the country, Swahili is spoken in a small area of the coast next to the Tanzanian border; south of this, towards Moçambique Island, Kimwani, regarded as a dialect of Swahili, is used. Immediately inland of the Swahili area, Makonde is used, separated farther inland by a small strip of Makhuwa-speaking territory from an area where Yao or ChiYao is used. Makonde and Yao belong to a different group, Yao being very close to the Mwera language of the Rondo Plateau area in Tanzania.
Swahili Wikipedia
The Swahili Wikipedia () is the Swahili language edition of Wikipedia. It is currently one (and the first) of four language editions of Wikipedia in Niger–Congo languages with over 1,000 articles. It is the largest language edition of Wikipedia in a Niger–Congo or Nilo-Saharan language, followed by the Yoruba Wikipedia.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Approximately 242 languages are spoken in the country, but only four have the status of national languages: Kituba ("Kikongo ya leta"), Lingala, Tshiluba, and Swahili. Although some people speak these regional, or trade languages as first languages, most of the population speak them as a second language after their own tribal language. Lingala was the official language of the colonial army, the "Force Publique", under Belgian colonial rule, and remains to this day the predominant language in the armed forces. Since the recent rebellions, a good part of the army in the East also uses Swahili where it is prevalent.
Chamling language
Despite its geographic prevalence, the actual number of Chamling speakers is estimated to be 10,000, spread across small tribes and villages. Many members of the Chamling ethnic and tribal communities are no longer fluent in the Chamling language, which is taught only in remote areas in the Udayapur District. Like Bantawa, Chamling is an endangered language. Many people in these areas speak a variety of Chamling that is mixed with the Nepali language, which is the official language of Nepal. Most Chamling-speaking people are Hindus or practitioners of Kiranti Mundhum.
Hausa language
Hausa (; "Yaren Hausa" or "Harshen Hausa") is the Chadic language (a branch of the Afroasiatic language family) with the largest number of speakers, spoken as a first language by some 44 million people, and as a second language by another 20 million. The total number of Hausa speakers is estimated at 63 million, according to Ethnologue.
The ancestral language of the Hausa people, one of the largest ethnic groups in Central Africa, Hausa is mostly spoken throughout southern Niger and northern Nigeria. It has developed into a lingua franca across much of Western Africa for purposes of trade.
Shabelle Zone
Based on the 2007 Census conducted by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia (CSA), this Zone has a total population of 464,253, of whom 258,558 are men and 205,695 women. While 89,593 or 19.3% are urban inhabitants, a further 118,608 or 25.55% were pastoralists. The largest ethnic group reported in Gode was the Somalis (98.62%); all other ethnic groups made up 1.38% of the population. Somali language is spoken as a first language by 98.98%; the remaining 1.02% spoke all other primary languages reported. 98.76% of the population said they were Muslim.
Indigenous language
Forty six languages are known to have just one native speaker while 357 languages have fewer than 50 speakers. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than more common ones.
Dhaiso people
Because many Dhaiso people have intermarried with people of different languages, the language is not being passed on to newer generations (most primary-school age children do not speak Dhaiso) as there is a need for wider communication. Because of this need, most Dhaiso are fluent in Swahili. Swahili is the national language and the language of trade along the coast. For a majority of Dhaiso, Swahili is their mother tongue. and many also say they can speak other neighboring languages like Digo or Sambaa. In 1999, with 5,000 speakers, Dhaiso was considered by UNESCO to be a "definitely endangered" language.
Tanzania
Over 100 different languages are spoken in Tanzania, making it the most linguistically diverse country in East Africa. The country does not have a "de jure" official language, although the national language is Swahili. Swahili is used in parliamentary debate, in the lower courts, and as a medium of instruction in primary school. English is used in foreign trade, in diplomacy, in higher courts, and as a medium of instruction in secondary and higher education, although the Tanzanian government is planning to discontinue English as a language of instruction altogether. Approximately 10 percent of Tanzanians speak Swahili as a first language, and up to 90 percent speak it as a second language.
Official languages of the United Nations
Swahili is a lingua franca throughout eastern Africa and is especially prevalent in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili, known as Kiswahili by its speakers, is an official language of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is an official language of the African Union and is officially recognised as a lingua franca of the East African Community. It is one of the most commonly spoken languages in Africa, is a compulsory subject in all Kenyan schools and is increasingly being used in eastern Burundi.
Sonjo language
Sonjo, or Temi, is a Bantu language spoken in northern Tanzania, 30–40 miles west of Lake Natron. Ethnolinguistically, it is a displaced member of Guthrie’s E50 group, most other members of which are found in Central Kenya. Within that group, it is most closely related to Gikuyu. The Sonjo people number about 30,000 (2002 SIL); many of them are bilingual in Swahili, the local language of education. Sonjo is largely undescribed.
Swahili literature
One of the main characteristics of Swahili literature is the relative heterogeneity of the Swahili language. One can find works written in Kiamu, Kimvita, Kipemba, Kiunguja, Kimrima, Kimtang'ata, Ki-Dar es Salaam and Ki-Nairobi which are considered varieties of Swahili.
Swahili culture
Swahili culture is the product of the history of the coastal part of the African Great Lakes region. As with the Swahili language, Swahili culture has a Bantu core that has borrowed from foreign influences.
Swahili Nation
Nigerian-born Dr. Alban signed them to his Sweden-based Dr Records in 1996. Singer Wayne "Tatz" Beckford from London joined the group. They produced the singles "Malaika", "Nyama", and "Hakuna Matata", for which they received a nomination to Channel O Music Awards in South Africa.
Languages of Argentina
Several Native American languages spoken in Argentina by the native people (1% of the population) are declining at rates that may result in only a handful of speakers within a generation. Kaiwá has 512 speakers, Nivaclé 200, Tapieté and Wichí Lhamtés Nocten only 100. These indigenous languages have suffered slow linguistic and cultural genocide. In this category in terms of number of speakers, one can also include some immigrant languages for instance Plautdietsch with only 140.
Swazi people
The Swazi or Swati () are a Bantu ethnic group of Southern Africa, predominantly inhabiting modern Eswatini and South Africa's Mpumalanga province. The Swati are part of the Nguni family that can be archaeologically traced in East Africa where the same tradition, beliefs and cultural practices are found. The Swati share a unique experience, culture and Royal lineage. This lineage is exclusive to the inhabitants of Swaziland, even though there have been more Swazi people that have moved to South Africa and the United Kingdom in the 20th century. The original inhabitants of Swaziland no longer reside in Swaziland as a majority population while some remain in the land. The Swazi people and the Kingdom of Eswatini today are named after Mswati II, who became king in 1839 after the death of his father King Sobhuza who strategically defeated the British who occupied Swaziland. The Kingdom of Swaziland was a region occupied by the San people of Southern Africa and the current Swazis came in from North Eastern regions through to Mozambique and eventually Swaziland in the 15th century. Mixtures with the San people and other Nguni tribes occurred. Their royal lineage can be traced to a chief named Dlamini I; this is still the royal clan name. About three-quarters of the clan groups are Nguni; the remainder are Sotho , Tsonga, others North East African and San descendants. These groups have intermarried freely. There are slight differences among Swazis as a nation with varying features and skin tones yet Swazi identity extends to all those with allegiance to the twin monarchs Ingwenyama "the Lion" (the king) and Indlovukati "the She-Elephant" (the queen mother). The dominant Swati language and culture are factors that unify Swazis as a nation since there is no other language spoken except for English.
Albanians in Switzerland
In Switzerland, no statistics have been collected so far on how many people call themselves Albanians. Based on the 2000 census, the number of Albanian speakers was estimated at 170,000. In 2012, there were 1302 people from Albania, 79,261 with Kosovar citizenship and 61,668 with Macedonian nationality, with neither all Kosovars nor all Macedonians being Albanians.The total number of people living in Switzerland Albanian descent of inclusive naturalized and dual citizens is currently estimated at about 200,000. 3.1% of the permanent population in Switzerland in 2016 stated that they use Albanian as the main language, which corresponds to 258'415. Thus, the Albanians belong together with the 316'525 Italians, the 303'525 Germans and the 268'660 Portuguese to the largest groups of foreigners in Switzerland.
Languages of Eswatini
Eswatini is home to several languages. Native languages are Swazi, Zulu, Tsonga, Afrikaans, and English. Recent immigrant languages include Chichewa and Southern Sotho.
East Africa
On the coastal section of the African Great Lakes region, another mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, leading to the development of the mixed Arab, Persian and African Swahili City States. The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arab members of the Bantu Swahili people. With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Tanzania (particularly Zanzibar) and Kenya—a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast—the Bantu Swahili language contains many Arabic loan-words as a consequence of these interactions.
Languages of Eswatini
A minority of Swazi, estimated to number 76,000 , speak Zulu, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. Tsonga, a Tswa–Ronga language and also an official language of South Africa, is spoken by 19,000 Swazis (). Afrikaans, another official language of South Africa and descended from Dutch, is spoken by 13,000 people in Eswatini.
Languages in censuses
The Sinhala language is spoken by the Sinhalese people, who constitute approximately 74% of the national population and total about 13 million. It utilizes the Sinhala abugida script, which is derived from the ancient Brahmi script. The Rodiya language, a dialect of Sinhala, is spoken by the low-caste community of chamodi veddhas. The Veddah peoples, totaling barely 2500, speak a distinct language, possibly a creolized form of an earlier indigenous language. The Tamil language is spoken by Sri Lankan Tamils, as well as by Tamil migrants from the neighboring Indian state of Tamil Nadu and by most Sri Lankan Moors. Tamil speakers number around 4.7 million. There are more than 50,000 speakers of the Sri Lankan Creole Malay language, which is strongly influenced by the Malay language.
Squamish people
The Squamish people (or in the "Squamish language (Sḵwx̱wú7mesh snichim)" Skwxwú7mesh , sometimes seen in English as Skwxwu7mesh (The "7" represents a glottal stop), historically transliterated as Sko-ko-mish) are an indigenous people in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. In 2012, there was population of 3,893 band members registered with the Squamish Nation. Their language is the Squamish language or "Sḵwx̱wú7mesh snichim", considered a part of the Coast Salish languages, and is categorized as nearly extinct with just 10 fluent speakers as of 2010. The traditional territory covered Point Grey as the southern border. From here, it continued northward to Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast, up the Howe Sound. The northern part included the Squamish, Cheakamus, Elaho and Mamquam rivers. Up the Cheakamus River it included land past Whistler, British Columbia. The southern and eastern part of their territory includes Indian Arm, along Burrard Inlet, through False Creek then English Bay and Point Grey. Today the Squamish people live mostly in seven communities, located in West Vancouver, North Vancouver, and within and nearby to the District of Squamish.
Swahili language
Maho (2009) considers these to be distinct languages:
The rest of the dialects are divided by him into two groups:
Socotra Swahili language
Socotra Swahili is an extinct variety of Swahili spoken on Socotra Island in Yemen. It was reported to be spoken by a fifth of the island (c. 2,000 people) in 1962.
Hispanophone
Hispanophones are estimated at between 480 and 577 (including 2nd language speakers) million globally, making Spanish the second most spoken language in terms of native speakers. Around 360 million live in Hispanic America and 45 million in Spain (70 million in Europe). There are a large number of Spanish speakers in the United States, comprising more than 34 million. There are also smaller Hispanophone groups in Canada, northern Morocco, Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, the Philippines and Brazil as well as in many other places around the world, particularly European Union where is one of 24 official languages and Australia.
Demographics of Switzerland
The non-official language with the largest group of native speakers is Serbo-Croatian with 103,000 speakers in 2000, followed by Albanian with 95,000, Portuguese with 89,500, Spanish with 77,500, English with 73,000, Macedonian 61,300, and a total of 173,000 speakers of other languages, amounting to roughly 10% of the population with a native language not among the four official languages.
Swahili
Swahili may refer to:
List of languages by total number of speakers
"Wikipedia" also lists other languages as having 50 million or more total speakers. For example, the Wikipedia page for the Tagalog language reports 70+ million speakers by as early as 2000 and 73+ million speakers by 2013: 28 million L1 (first language) speakers as of 2007 and 45 million L2 (second language) speakers as of 2013. However, Tagalog is not included in this section because "Ethnologue" reports it as having only 23+ million total speakers.
Kenyan Australians
The 74 languages the Special Broadcasting Service broadcasts in includes Swahili and Dinka, both languages spoken by many Kenyan-born Australians.
Spanish language
Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. It is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union and by many other international organizations.
It is estimated that more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language, which qualifies it as second on the lists of languages by number of native speakers. Instituto Cervantes claims that there are an estimated 477 million Spanish speakers with native competence and 572 million Spanish speakers as a first or second language—including speakers with limited competence—and more than 21 million students of Spanish as a foreign language.
Wagaya language
There are reports of around 10 Native speakers worldwide as of 1983, but the language is currently extinct.
Vili people
They speak the Vili, a Bantu language whose number of speakers was estimated at 50 000 in 2010. Approximately 45 000 were counted in the Republic of Congo and 5 000 in Gabon. The other known names and dialect names are : Civili, Civili ci Loango, Civili ci Moongo, Civili ci Waanda, Civili ci Yombe, Fiot, Fiote, Tshivili, Tsivili. The close ethnic group are: Kotchi, Lindji, Ciyoombe, Woyo, Yombe, Yoombe.
Gulariya
At the time of the 2011 Nepal census it had a population of 55,747 and 11,220 households. Nepali is spoken natively by Paharis as well as by people of other ethnicity as the national language and lingua franca. The mother tongue for the older residents is still Awadhi and Tharu language, which is understood and normally spoken by the entire population of the district. Tharu people are considered as the original inhabitants of this area.
Burunge language
Burunge both as a language and distinct designation of peoples are in danger of disappearing as a result of the dominance of Swahili in Tanzania, the small population of Burunge speakers, and also the Burunge clan of approximately thirteen thousand being absorbed into stronger, more populous clans. The Rangi is one such clan; they are a neighboring clan with their own specific language, and not only do they have a larger population than the Burunge, they are also more economically advantaged. The Rangi have subgroup "clubs" within their clan, that male members of the Burungee can officially join to become a member of the Rangi clan. Once someone is a member, they have to shed their identity as a Burunge and become completely Rangi by marrying a Rangi woman and raising their children as Rangi. Many Burunge have joined the Rangi this way over the past few decades, so it is unclear if Burunge as a people and language group will continue to exist as a distinct and separate culture, as the new generations born of both Burunge and Rangi heritage will be seen as and taught only Rangi language and culture.
Nahuatl
According to the 2000 census by INEGI, Nahuatl is spoken by an estimated 1.45 million people, some 198,000 (14.9%) of whom are monolingual. There are many more female than male monolinguals, and women represent nearly two thirds of the total number. The states of Guerrero and Hidalgo have the highest rates of monolingual Nahuatl speakers relative to the total Nahuatl speaking population, at 24.2% and 22.6%, respectively. For most other states the percentage of monolinguals among the speakers is less than 5%. This means that in most states more than 95% of the Nahuatl speaking population are bilingual in Spanish.
Bantu languages
The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili; however, the majority of its speakers use it as a second language (L1: c. 16 million, L2: 80 million, as of 2015)
Wolof language
Wolof is spoken by more than 10 million people and about 40 percent (approximately 5 million people) of Senegal's population speak Wolof as their native language. Increased mobility, and especially the growth of the capital Dakar, created the need for a common language: today, an additional 40 percent of the population speak Wolof as a second or acquired language. In the whole region from Dakar to Saint-Louis, and also west and southwest of Kaolack, Wolof is spoken by the vast majority of the people. Typically when various ethnic groups in Senegal come together in cities and towns, they speak Wolof. It is therefore spoken in almost every regional and departmental capital in Senegal. Nevertheless, the official language of Senegal is French.
Tswana language
Tswana is an official language and lingua franca of Botswana. The majority of Tswana-speakers are found in the north of South Africa, where four million people speak the language and an urbanised variety which is part slang and not the formal Setswana, known as Pretoria Tswana, is the principal language of that city. The three South African provinces with the most speakers are Gauteng (circa 11%) and Northern Cape 
and North West (over 70%). Until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the bantustans of the apartheid regime. The Setswana language in the Northwest Province has variations in which it is spoken according to the tribes found in the Tswana culture [Bakgatla, Barolong, Bakwena, Batlhaping, Bahurutshe, Bafokeng to name a few] the written language remains the same. Although Tswana is spoken mostly in South Africa and Botswana, a small number of speakers are also found in Zimbabwe and Namibia; respectively, an unknown number of people and about 10,000 people speak the language there.
Multinational state
South Africa has eleven official languages (Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu) and formally recognises several other languages spoken by minority nations. Speakers of each language may be of a different nationality—for example, some members of the Ndebele and Tswana nations speak Zulu, and groups such as the Thembu and Hlubi speak Xhosa.
Southwestern Mandarin
Varieties of Southwestern Mandarin are spoken by roughly 260 million people. If considered a language distinct from Mandarin, it would have the eighth-most native speakers in the world, behind Mandarin itself, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Arabic and Bengali.
Cushitic peoples
The Somalis are an ethnic group inhabiting the Horn of Africa. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. They are predominantly Sunni Muslim. Ethnic Somalis number around 28-30 million and are principally concentrated in Somalia (around 15 million), Ethiopia (8.5 million), Kenya (2.4 million), and Djibouti (534,000). A Somali diaspora is also found in parts of the Middle East, African Great Lakes region, Southern Africa, North America, Oceania, and Western Europe.
Gbe languages
Estimates of the total number of speakers of Gbe languages vary considerably. Capo (1988) gives a modest estimate of four million, while SIL's Ethnologue (15th edition, 2005) gives eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe languages are Ewe (Ghana and Togo) and Fon (Benin, eastern Togo) at four million and 3 million speakers, respectively. Ewe is a language of formal education for secondary schools and universities in Ghana, and is also used in non-formal education in Togo. In Benin, Aja (740,000 speakers) and Fon were two of the six national languages selected by the government for adult education in 1992.
Culture of Uganda
Uganda is ethnologically diverse, with at least 40 languages in usage. Luganda is the most common language. English and Swahili are the official languages of Uganda, even though only a relatively small proportion of the population speak English. Access to economic and political power is almost impossible without having mastered that language. Swahili, the East African lingua franca, is relatively widespread as a trade language and was made an official national language in September 2005. Luganda, a language widespread in central Uganda, has been the official vernacular language in education for central Uganda for a long time.
Swahili language
Swahili, also known as (translation: language of the Swahili people), is a Bantu language and the first language of the Swahili people. It is a lingua franca of the African Great Lakes region and other parts of eastern and south-eastern Africa, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Comorian, spoken in the Comoros Islands is sometimes considered to be a dialect of Swahili, though other authorities consider it a distinct language.
Mwani language
The Mwani language, or Kimwani (pronounced ) is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity (60%) with Swahili, it is not intelligible with it. It is spoken by around 120,000 people (including 20,000 who use it as their second language). Speakers of "Kimwani" also use Portuguese, (the official language of Mozambique), Swahili and Makhuwa language. "Kiwibo", the dialect of the Island of Ibo is the prestige dialect. "Kimwani" (sometimes spelled as "Quimuane") is also called "Mwani" (sometimes spelled as: "Mwane, Muane") and "Ibo". According to Anthony P. Grant: 'Kimwani of northern Mozambique appears to be the result of imperfect shift towards Swahili several centuries ago by speakers of Makonde, and Arends et al. suggest it might turn out to be a Makonde–Swahili mixed language.
Somali language
As of 2006, there were approximately 16.6 million speakers of Somali, of which around 8.3 million resided in Somalia. The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti.
Sahrawi people
According to the Ethnologue database, there were more than three million Hassaniya speakers in 2006, of whom 2.7 million resided in Mauritania. The number of Hassaniya speakers identifying as "Sahrawi" in the modern political sense is unknown, and estimates are hotly contested by partisans in the Western Sahara conflict. Most estimates however center around 200,000 to 400,000. These populations are centered in southern Morocco, Western Sahara, and in the Tindouf Province of Algeria, where large number of refugees from Western Sahara are located.
African Great Lakes
The Bantu Swahili language is the most commonly spoken language in the African Great Lakes region. It also serves as a national or official language of four nations in the region: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nilotic languages
There are approximately 7 million current speakers of Nilotic languages. Nilotic peoples, who are the native speakers of the languages, originally migrated from the upper Nile area. Nilotic language speakers live in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Demographics of Tanzania
Over 100 different languages are spoken in Tanzania, making it the most linguistically diverse country in East Africa. Among the languages spoken in Tanzania are all four of Africa's language families: Bantu, Cushitic, Nilotic, and Khoisan. Swahili and English are Tanzania's official languages. Swahili belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family. The Sandawe people speak a language that may be related to the Khoe languages of Botswana and Namibia, while the language of the Hadzabe people, although it has similar click consonants, is arguably a language isolate. The language of the Iraqw people is Cushitic. Other languages are Indian languages and Portuguese (spoken by Goans and Mozambicans).
Swahili people
The modern Swahili people speak the Swahili language as a mother tongue, which belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family. The language contains loan words from Arabic and Persian.
Pipil language
The exact number of speakers has been difficult to determine because persecution of Pipil speakers throughout the 20th century (massacres after suppression of the 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising, laws that made speaking Nawat illegal) made them conceal their use of the language. (About 30,000 people were killed during the uprising over the course of a few weeks, and those who spoke Nawat outside their homes against the new rules "provoked shame and fear." A young Nawat language activist, Carlos Cortez, explained in 2010 that this fear is worse for older speakers.)
Settler Swahili
British colonization in the region—largely in what is now Kenya and Zambia—created a complex relationship between English and the native languages of the countries where Settla is spoken.
The Kwere (Ngh'were) of Tanzania
The pervasive dominance of the Swahili language in coastal affairs throughout East Africa for many centuries have led to most peoples indigenous in the area to be at least bilingual, the Ngh'were are no different. This was confirmed in 2002 by Bagamoyo elders who attended a conference held in the city championing its nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Recently, Bagamoyo was reported as the recipient of Tanzania’s seventh world heritage site. What impact this award will have on Ngh'were residency in the city is not yet known, but the tour handlers are advertising globally.
List of lingua francas
Wolof is a widely spoken lingua franca of Senegal and The Gambia (especially the capital, Banjul). It is the native language of approximately 5 million Wolof people in Senegal, and is spoken as a second language by an equal number.
Swahili coast
The Swahili Coast is a coastal area in Southeast Africa inhabited by the Swahili people. It mainly consists of littoral Kenya, Tanzania, and northern Mozambique. The term may also include some of the Indian Ocean islands, such as Zanzibar, Pate and Comoros, which lie off the Swahili Coast. The Swahili Coast has a distinct culture, demography, religion and geography, and as a result - along with other factors, including economic - has witnessed rising secessionism.
Hausa people
The Hausa language has more first-language speakers than any other African language. It has an estimated 67 million first-language speakers, and close to 50 million second-language speakers.
Swahili people
Although most Swahili live with living standards far below that of upper hierarchy of the wealthiest nations, the Swahili are generally considered a relatively economically powerful group due to their history of trade. They are comparatively well-off; According to the United Nations, Zanzibar has a 25% higher per capita GDP than the rest of Tanzania. This economic influence has led to the continued spread of their culture and language throughout East Africa.
Culture of Tanzania
A total of 130 languages are spoken in Tanzania; most of them are from the Bantu family. Swahili and English are the two official languages of Tanzania. However, Swahili is the national language.
Tswana people
The largest number of ethnic Tswana people actually live in South Africa. They are one of the largest ethnic groups in the country, and the Tswana language is one of eleven official languages in South Africa. There were over 4 million Tswana speakers in the country in 2012, with North West Province having a majority of 2,200,000 Tswana speakers. From 1948 to 1994, South African Tswana people were defined by the Apartheid regime to be citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of ten bantustans set up for the purpose of defending the policy of denying black Africans citizenship in South Africa.
Languages of Eswatini
Chewa (or Nyanja), the national language of Malawi, and Sotho (Sesotho or Southern Sotho), spoken mainly in Lesotho and Free State, South Africa, are immigrant languages with 5,700 and 4,700 speakers, respectively, in Eswatini. Shimaore is also an immigrant language, and is spoken by 600 inhabitants of the country.
Swahili people
There are two main theories about the origins of the Shirazi subgroup of the Swahili people. One thesis based on oral tradition states that immigrants from the Shiraz region in southwestern Iran directly settled various mainland ports and islands on the eastern Africa seaboard beginning in the tenth century. By the time of the Persian settlement in the area, the earlier occupants had been displaced by incoming Bantu and Nilotic populations. More people from different parts of the Persian Gulf also continued to migrate to the Swahili coast over several centuries thereafter, and these formed the modern Shirazi. The second theory on Shirazi origins also posits that they came from Persia, but first settled in the Horn of Africa. In the twelfth century, as the gold trade with the distant entrepot of Sofala on the Mozambique seaboard grew, the settlers are then said to moved southwards to various coastal towns in Kenya, Tanzania, northern Mozambique and the Indian Ocean islands. By 1200 AD, they had established local sultanates and mercantile networks on the islands of Kilwa, Mafia and Comoros along the Swahili coast, and in northwestern Madagascar.
Malawi
Malawi's population is made up of the Chewa, Nyanja, Tumbuka, Yao, Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Ngoni, and Ngonde native ethnic groups, as well as populations of Asians and Europeans. The official language is English. Major languages include Chichewa, a language spoken by over 57% of the population, Chinyanja (12.8%), Chiyao (10.1%), and Chitumbuka (9.5%). Other native languages are Malawian Lomwe, spoken by around 250,000 in the southeast of the country; Kokola, spoken by around 200,000 people also in the southeast; Lambya, spoken by around 45,000 in the northwestern tip; Ndali, spoken by around 70,000; Nyakyusa-Ngonde, spoken by around 300,000 in northern Malawi; Malawian Sena, spoken by around 270,000 in southern Malawi; and Tonga, spoken by around 170,000 in the north.
English-speaking world
Approximately 330 to 360 million people speak English as their first language.
With 258 million native speakers, the United States comprises the majority of the global total. As pictured in the pie graph below, most native speakers of English are Americans.
Hausa language
Non-native speakers of Hausa numbered more than 25 million and, in some areas, live close to native Hausa. It has replaced many other languages especially in the north-central and north-eastern part of Nigeria and continues to gain popularity in other parts of Africa as a result of Hausa movies and music which spread out throughout the region.
Spanish language
Spanish (; ) or Castilian (, ), is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.
Somalis in the United Kingdom
The Somali language is the mother tongue of the Somali people, and the official language of Somalia. It is a member of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. The 2011 UK Census recorded 85,918 people living in England and Wales who spoke Somali as their main language. This represented 0.16 per cent of the population, and 2.06 per cent of speakers of non-English main languages. However, Somali speakers were present in only a few wards (16 per cent). The number of Somali speakers recorded in Scotland was 1,050.
Somalis
The exact number of speakers of Somali is unknown. One source estimates that there are 7.78 million speakers of Somali in Somalia itself and 12.65 million speakers globally. The Somali language is spoken by ethnic Somalis in Greater Somalia and the Somali diaspora.
Shirazi people
Like the rest of the Swahili people, the Shirazi speak the Swahili language as a mother tongue. It belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family. However, the dialects of Swahili language is best described as a syncretic language, that blended Sabaki Bantu, Comoro, Pokomo, Iranian, Arabic and Indian words and structure reflecting the syncretic fusion of people from diverse backgrounds that form the Shirazi people.
Languages of Lesotho
A minority of Basotho, estimated to number 248,000 , speak Zulu, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa. Phuthi, a Nguni language closely related to Swazi, an official language of South Africa and Swaziland, is spoken by 43,000 Basotho (). Xhosa, another Nguni language and official language of South Africa, is spoken by 18,000 people in Lesotho. Speakers of these minority languages typically also speak Sotho.
Luganda
With about four million first-language-speakers in the Buganda region and a million others fluent elsewhere, it is the most widely-spoken Ugandan language. As a second language, it follows English and precedes Swahili.
Sotho people
Aside from Lesotho and South Africa, 60,000 people speak Silozi (a close relative of Sesotho) in Zambia. Small numbers of Sesotho speakers reside in Botswana, Swaziland and the Caprivi Strip of Namibia.
Gender neutrality in genderless languages
Swahili is a Bantu language spoken in many parts of Africa such as Kenya and Tanzania. It is largely gender neutral in specific nouns. Words such as actor/actress (mwigaji wa hadithi) and waiter/waitress (mtumishi mezani) are gender neutral among most others in the language. The words he, him, she, her translate to a single word in Swahili, yeye.
Swahili literature
Fiction in Swahili literature mainly consisted of oral narrative traditions. It was not until the 1940s that Swahili started to have a written fiction. Modern Swahili literature is a direct result of the standardization of Swahili. Previously, writers would write in a particular dialect to show their attachment to a certain dialect, such as Lamu, Tanga or Mombasa. The normalization of Swahili motivated writers, such as George Mhina and Lyndon Harries to promote the development of Swahili by creating a literary corpus.
Swahili language
Standard Swahili has five vowel phonemes: , , , , and . Vowels are never reduced, regardless of stress, but they are pronounced in full as follows:Swahili also has the phonemes . "[I]n some Arabic loans (nouns, verbs, adjectives) emphasis or intensity is expressed by reproducing the original emphatic consonants and the uvular , or lengthening a vowel, where aspiration would be used in inherited Bantu words."