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My wife Edith has written school text books for African countries, in English. I have for a while thought that the world would move to English because of the Internet. At the end of this page there are two links.
The first link strongly suggests I may well be wrong. In fact I was staggered by what I read. An extract from the article is included below.
The second link points to an article about the hoped for growth for the Brics Organization. I was also staggered by these figures, and the article contains an excellent bar chart displaying the world population distribution by country. Not much English in the top three I am afraid.
There are a total of around 150 million people speaking the language. It is the most spoken language in Africa and the sixth in the world. It includes various dialects such as Tunisian, Egyptian, and Sudanese among others. It is deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric of North Africa, including in countries like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
The country with the most French speakers is not France, but the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). With a population of more than 100 million people, the country has an estimated 40 million French speakers, making it the largest Francophone country in the world by the number of French speakers. A total of 29 countries in Africa have French as an official language, including Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, Gabon and more. It is estimated that 120 million people in Africa speak French, mostly in West Africa, Central Africa and North Africa.
As a lingua franca in East Africa, it is widely spoken across countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and DRC. With more than 80 million people speaking the language, it plays a vital role in bridging communication between diverse ethnic groups.
Hakuna Matata is a famous Swahili phrase that has gained widespread recognition in the West, largely thanks to Disney’s The Lion King. It means “No worries” or “No problem”.
This language is spoken by the Hausa people in the northern parts of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin, Togo, the southern parts of Niger and Chad, with minorities in Ivory Coast. Spoken by around 70 million people, it boasts a rich oral literature and a collection of proverbs reflecting the cultural heritage of its speakers.
It is the official language of Ethiopia and one of the most widely spoken languages in the Horn of Africa. It belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family and uses the unique Ge'ez script. It is spoken by around 57 million people, and has a rich and varied literature, with a range of poems, religious texts and modern novels.
Being one of the most influential ethnic languages in Afric , it is spoken primarily in Nigeria, and in parts of Benin and Togo. There is a standard form of Yoruba, but various dialects due to the language being used in different regions. It uses the Latin alphabet, using some additional characters to represent specific sounds. It is spoken by around 45 million people,
With around 40 million people speaking Oromo, the language is the seventh most spoken language in Africa. This Cushitic language is mainly used in Ethiopia and Kenya by the Oromo people.
The eighth most spoken language in Africa is one of Nigeria's major languages. It is primarily used in the southeastern region, in states such as Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo. There are around 40 million people speaking the language, which features folktales, proverbs and songs.
There are around 30 million people in Africa who speak Portuguese as it is the official language of several African countries including Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
If you have any comments, corrections, suggestions or plain criticism,
I would appreciate it if you would communicate the same to me.