Languages of Mozambique

Information about Languages of Mozambique

Mozambique is a multilingual country. A number of Bantu languages are indigenous to Mozambique. Portuguese, inherited from the colonial period, is the official language, but only 40% speak it, mostly as a lingua franca. Ethnologue lists 43 languages spoken in the country

Portuguese is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique. Other widely spoken languages include Swahili, Makhuwa, Sena, Ndau, and Shangaan (Tsonga). Other indigenous languages of Mozambique include Lomwe, Makonde, Chopi, Chuwabu, Ronga, Zulu, and Tswa.

Small communities of Arabs, Chinese, and Indians speak their own languages (Indians from Portuguese India speak any of the Portuguese Creoles of their origin) aside from Portuguese as their second language. Most educated Mozambicans speak English, which is used in schools and business as second or third language.

Sociolinguistics

Multilingualism

Most Mozambicans speak more than one language. About 40% of all people speak Portuguese — 33.5%, mostly Bantus, as a second language and 6.5%, including pure-blooded Portuguese and mestiços, speak it as their first language.

Linguistic geography

Influence among languages

Many indigenous languages of Mozambique have Portuguese-origin loan words.

External links

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Languages of Africa
Sovereign statesAlgeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon Cape Verde Central African Republic Chad Comoros Democratic Republic of the Congo Republic of the Congo Cte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Djibouti Egypt Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon The Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Kenya Lesotho Liberia Libya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Mauritius Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Rwanda So Tom and Prncipe Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Senegal Seychelles Sierra Leone Somalia South Africa Sudan Swaziland Tanzania Togo Tunisia Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe
Dependencies and
other territories		Canary Islands Ceuta Mayotte Melilla Puntland Runion St. Helena Socotra Somaliland Western Sahara
Motto
none
Anthem
Pátria Amada
(formerly Viva, Viva a FRELIMO)


Capital
(and largest city) Maputo

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multilingualism can refer to an occurrence regarding an individual speaker who uses two or more languages, a community of speakers where two or more languages are used, or between speakers of different languages.
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Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree.
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Portuguese}}} 
Writing system: Latin alphabet (Portuguese variant) 
Official status
Official language of: Angola
Brazil
Cape Verde
East Timor
Equatorial Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Macau (PRC)
Mozambique
Portugal
São Tomé and Príncipe
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A lingua franca (Italian literally meaning Frankish language, see etymology below) is any language widely used beyond the population of its native speakers. The de facto status of lingua franca
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Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see below for derivation) is a Bantu language. It is the most widely spoken language of sub-Saharan Africa. Although only 5-10 million people speak it as their native language[1]
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The Makhuwa language (also spelled Makua) is a Bantu language spoken by 2.5 million Makua people, who live north of the Zambezi River in Mozambique. It is the most important indigenous language of Mozambique.

Makhuwa is closely related to Lomwe.
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Ndau is one of the Shona dialects. It is spoken by people from the region of "Chipinge". Some of its words are very similar to that of Ndebele and often this dialect can sound very different from that of basic Shona.
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The Tsonga or Xitsonga language is spoken in southern Africa by the Tsonga people, also known as the Shangaan.

Classification

Tsonga belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo languages.
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The Chopi are an ethnic group of Mozambique. They have traditionally lived primarily in the Zavala region of southern Mozambique, in the Inhambane Province. They traditionally lived a life of subsistence agriculture, traditionally living a rural existence, although many were
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Ronga

Ronga (XiRonga; sometimes ShiRonga or GiRonga) is a South-Eastern Bantu language in the Tswa-Ronga family spoken just South of Maputo in Mozambique. Its index code is [rng]. It extends a little into South Africa.
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Zulu}}} 
Official status
Official language of: South Africa
Swaziland
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: zu
ISO 639-2: zul
ISO 639-3: zul

Zulu (called isiZulu
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Tswa, or XiTswa (index [tsc]) is a South-Eastern Bantu language in Southern Mozambique. Along with Ronga and Tsonga it makes up the Tswa-Ronga family of languages. It is mainly spoken in the rural areas west of Inhambane.
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Majority populations
 Singapore [1]
 Christmas Island, Australia [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kt.html]
Minority populations
 Indonesia [2]
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This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.
Protection is not an endorsement of the current [ version] ([ protection log]).
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Portuguese India (Portuguese: Índia Portuguesa or Estado da Índia) was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.
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Portuguese creoles are creole languages which have been significantly influenced by Portuguese.

Origins

Portugal in the period of discoveries and colonization created a linguistic contact with native languages and people of the discovered lands and pidgins were formed.
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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Languages of Africa are a diverse set of languages, many of which bear little relation to one another. European language has a great deal of influence due to the recent history of colonization.

There are an estimated 2000 languages spoken in Africa.
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country, state, and nation can have various meanings. Therefore, diverse lists of these entities are possible. Wikipedia offers the following lists:

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The official language of Algeria is Arabic, as specified in its constitution since 1963. In addition to this, Berber has been recognized as a "national language" by constitutional amendment since May 8, 2002.
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Using the data from the 1983 census of Angola, Portuguese is both the official and predominant language in the black, mestiço and white populations, as it is spoken in the homes of about two-thirds of the population and as a second language by many more throughout the country.
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Cameroon is home to 230 languages. These include 55 Afro-Asiatic languages, two Nilo-Saharan languages, and 173 Niger-Congo languages. This latter group is divided into one West Atlantic language (Fulfulde), 32 Adamawa-Ubangui languages, and 142 Benue-Congo languages (130 of
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Chad has two official languages, French and literary Arabic, and over 120 indigenous languages. A vernacular version of Arabic, Chadian Arabic, is the lingua franca.

Afro-Asiatic languages

  • Chadic languages

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The official language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is French. Four other languages have the status of national language: Kikongo, Lingala, Swahili and Tshiluba. There is an estimated total of 242 languages spoken (Ethnologue.com lists 214 living languages).
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There are a number of languages spoken in Egypt, but Egyptian Arabic (Maṣri) is by far the most widely spoken in the country. Coptic, the last stage of the indigenous Egyptian language, is used by the Coptic Orthodox Church.
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Eritrea is generally considered to have nine ethno-linguistic groups. Each of these has their own language: Afar, Arabic (spoken by the Rashaida), Beja (spoken by the Hedareb), Blin, Kunama, Nara, Saho, Tigre and Tigrinya.
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Ethiopia has many indigenous languages (some 84 according to SIL), most of them Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Cushitic, Omotic) and Nilo-Saharan.

English is the most widely spoken foreign language and is the medium of instruction in secondary schools and universities.
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The official language of Gabon is French; it is also the medium of instruction. Before World War II very few Gabonese learned French, nearly all of them working in either business or government administration.
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