what language do they speak in africa?

Answer 1

More languages than on any other continent. The principal languages are Arabic, English, and French, but there are hundreds of tribal languages, such as Banto, !Kung, and Xhosa.

Answer 2

There are many languages in Africa, not just one. Africa has three times the territory of the United States. In other words, the whole country of the United States could fit inside the continent of Africa three times. There have been many languages on that continent for thousands of years and there have been many more dialects. I think that the person who said there are 300 dialects on the continent was trying to say that there are 300 hundred languages. But a dialect is another form of speaking the a language. American English, for example, could be considered a dialect of the English language, as could Australian English, Irish English, Scottish English, or South African English. Do some research on Africa and learn a few things on your own.

Answer 3

Africa has different languages. It's not like the USA where you can move from state to state and speak english and people will understand. I have two friends from Africa and they are from different parts of the same country but they can't understand each other's language. Anyway, the main language is Swahili. English and french is also known by many.

Answer 4

Which part of Africa?
there is a lot of local languages, but people can understand English or French as a second languages

Answer 5

There are more than 2000 languages in Africa, many of them indigenous to the continent. These 2000 languages comprise several major linguistic families: Afro-Asiatic, Malayo-Polynesian, Niger-Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan; and Khoisan. Many of these indigenous languages do not have a written form -- an alphabet or other method of writing, but educators are attempting to use the roman alphabet to phonetize some indigenous languages. Compare this with Europe, which essentially has one family of languages, Indo-European, of which English is in the Germanic branch. Most European languages are in the Indo-European family and use the roman alphabet.
The most widely spoken languages in Africa are swahili in East Africa and Hausa in West Africa. As you may already know, most African countries were colonized by European powers like Portugal, Britain, Belgium, France and Holland so many of the urban centers have been infused with Indo-European languages, which are not indigenous to Africa. French is spoken, in addition to 100's of indigenous African languages, in the Ivory Coast, Algeria, Morocco, and Ghana because the French once controlled their territories. Portugese is spoken in Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and other African nations because of Portugal's hold on African land. But prior to European colonization, most of the people in these countries spoke their indigenous tongues which is different for each tribe. Ghana alone has more than 200 languages. Because some of these languages are only spoken by a few thousand people in villages, they haven't yet been formally studied by linguists. If you were to ask a linguist how many languages are spoken in Africa, you would get many different answers because of the hair-splitting job of sorting out dialects from languages. Swahili is a mixture of Arabic and Bantu. There are more than 500 dialects of Bantu.
Linguistists say that many aspects of African American speech, or Black English, a.k.a, ebonics, are derived from Nigerian-Kordofanian rules of grammar. Contrary to popular belief, ebonics which was once thought to be just plain "uneducated speech" actually has linguistic roots in Africa and follows a certain set of rules common to Nigerian-Kordofanian languages, which are spoken in many West African countries. This area was where the slave trade in the 17 and 18th centuries was rampant and hence, many African-American will find their linguistic roots there as well.

Answer 6

There are many countries in Africa and many languages spoken.

Answer 7

North Africa, its Arabic, then french and other regional languages.

Answer 8

There are 300 different dialects in Africa.

Answer 9

It depends on the country. I think Swahili and English is commonly spoken but Arabic is spoken in the Northern regions.

Answer 10

there are very many. Like asking what language to they speak in Europe.