Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: How many native speakers of Swahili are there?
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.
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.
Worldwide, English is used widely as a lingua franca and can be seen to be the dominant language at this time. The world's largest language by native speakers is Mandarin Chinese which is a first language of around 960 million people, or 12.44% of the population, predominantly in Greater China. Spanish is spoken by around 330 to 400 million people, predominantly in the Americas and Spain. Arabic is spoken by around 280 million people. Bengali is spoken by around 250 to 300 million people worldwide, predominantly in Bangladesh and India. Hindi is spoken by about 200 million speakers, mostly in India. Portuguese is spoken by about 230 million speakers in Portugal, Brazil, East Timor, and Southern Africa.
Estimates of the number of English speakers who are second language and foreign-language speakers vary greatly from 470 million to more than 1,000 million depending on how proficiency is defined. Linguist David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers by a ratio of 3 to 1. In Kachru's three-circles model, the "outer circle" countries are countries such as the Philippines, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Singapore, and Nigeria with a much smaller proportion of native speakers of English but much use of English as a second language for education, government, or domestic business,
and where English is routinely used for school instruction and official interactions with the government.
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.
Ethnic groups of Ivory Coast include Akan 42.1%, Voltaic or Gur speakers 17.6%, Northern Mandes 16.5%, Krous 11%, Southern Mandes 10%, other 2.8% (includes 30,000 Lebanese and 45,000 French) (2004). The immigrant community makes up over 20% of a population of over 6 million. An estimated 65 native languages are spoken in the country. Dyula acts as a trade language and is commonly spoken by Muslims.
The official language of Saudi Arabia is Arabic. The three main regional variants spoken by Saudis are Hejazi Arabic (about 6 million speakers), Najdi Arabic (about 8 million speakers), and Gulf Arabic (about 0.2 million speakers). Saudi Sign Language is the principal language of the deaf community. The large expatriate communities also speak their own languages, the most numerous of which are Tagalog (700,000), Rohingya (400,000), Urdu (380,000), Egyptian Arabic (300,000), and Indonesian (250,000).
Soga, or Lusoga, is a Bantu language spoken in Uganda. It is the native language of the Soga people or Basoga of the Busoga region of southern Uganda. With over three million speakers, it is one of the major languages of Uganda, after English, Swahili, and Luganda. However, it is largely restricted to the Busoga region, which is mainly within the natural boundaries of Lake Victoria to the south, Lake Kyoga to the north, the Nile river to the west and the Mpologoma "(Lion)" river to the east of Namutumba district. It is tonal.
The official language of the Republic is Arabic. The spoken languages are: Egyptian Arabic (68%), Sa'idi Arabic (29%), Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic (1.6%), Sudanese Arabic (0.6%), Domari (0.3%), Nobiin (0.3%), Beja (0.1%), Siwi and others. Additionally, Greek, Armenian and Italian, and more recently, African languages like Amharic and Tigrigna are the main languages of immigrants.
The Nyanga language (native name "Kinyanga") is a language spoken by the Nyanga people in Kivu province, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Speaker estimates range from 27,000 (Biebuyck & Matheene 1970) to 150,000 (1994 census). Many of the Nyanga speak Congo Swahili, the dominant regional lingua franca, as a second language. Nyanga is a Bantu language. Most of the (scarce) linguistic research conducted on Nyanga has been based on the materials published by Biebuyck and Mateene.
The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented. About one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500. These are predominantly based on European languages such as English and French due to the European Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that arose at that time. With the improvements in ship-building and navigation, traders had to learn to communicate with people around the world, and the quickest way to do this was to develop a pidgin, or simplified language suited to the purpose; in turn, full creole languages developed from these pidgins. In addition to creoles that have European languages as their base, there are, for example, creoles based on Arabic, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with almost ten million native speakers, followed by Tok Pisin with about 4 million, most of whom are second-language speakers.
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.
The first translation of parts of the Bible into Swahili was accomplished by 1868, with a complete New Testament translation following in 1879 and a translation of the whole Bible in 1890. Since that time, there have been several translations into different dialects of Swahili as spoken in different regions of East Africa; these include the "Union Translation" published by the Bible Society of Tanzania in 1950 and the "Swahili Common Language" version.
Henry Hare Dugmore, a Methodist, translated into Xhosa language. Tiyo Soga (1829–1871) was ordained the first African Presbyterian minister in 1856 and also translated.
"Ndandililo ni Kutyoka" is a translation of the books of Genesis and Exodus from the Old Testament into the Yao language published by The Bible Society of Malawi, Blantyre, Malawi 2004.
Hindi is the official languages of the State. Maithili (61 million speakers including Bajjika dialect which has 11 million speakers in India), and Urdu are other recognised languages of the state. Unrecognised languages of the state are Bhojpuri (60 million), Angika (30 million) and Magahi (20 million). Bhojpuri and Magahi are sociolinguistically a part of the Hindi Belt languages fold, thus they were not granted official status in the state.The number of speakers of the Bihari languages is difficult to count because of unreliable sources. In the urban region, most educated speakers of the language name Hindi as their language because this is what they use in formal contexts and believe it to be the appropriate response because of unawareness. The uneducated and the rural population of the region regards Hindi as the generic name for their language.
The official languages of the Comoros are Comorian, French and Arabic. Comorian (or "Shikomoro") is a Bantu language closely related to Swahili. It is by far the most spoken language in the country, 96.9%. However, Comorian is confined almost exclusively for oral use. Before and during the colonial period, no official recognition was granted at all to Comorian. Before the French colonisation, Arabic and Swahili were the languages used by the political powers (the sultans) and by education. Arabic was the language of religion, and a language of commerce. As a result of colonisation, administration and education are now in French. The Comoros is a full member of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and of the Arab League.
Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French and German. A number of non-official minority languages are spoken as well.
As no census exists, there are no official statistical data regarding the distribution or usage of Belgium's three official languages or their dialects. However, various criteria, including the language(s) of parents, of education, or the second-language status of foreign born, may provide suggested figures. An estimated 60% of the Belgian population are native speakers of Dutch (often referred to as Flemish), and 40% of the population speaks French natively. French-speaking Belgians are often referred to as Walloons, although the French speakers in Brussels are not Walloons.
ǂʼAmkoe is moribund and severely endangered. There are only a few dozen native speakers, most born before 1960 (one Sasi speaker was born in 1971, one N!aqriaxe speaker in 1969), many of whom no longer speak the language fluently. The first language of the younger generations, and even of many older, native speakers who no longer speak ǂʼAmkoe well, is Gǀui, a Khoe language, in the case of N!aqriaxe; Kgalagadi, a Bantu language that is the local lingua franca, in the case of ǂHoan; and the Ngwato dialect of Tswana, in the case of Sasi.
French, the official language, is taught in schools and serves as a lingua franca in the country. An estimated 70 languages are spoken in Ivory Coast. One of the most common is Dyula, which acts as a trade language, as well as a language commonly spoken by the Muslim population.
Nǁng or Nǁŋǃke, commonly known by the name of its dialect Nǀuu (Nǀhuki), is a moribund Tuu (Khoisan) language once spoken in South Africa. It is no longer spoken on a daily basis, as the speakers live in different villages. The dialect name ǂKhomani is used for the entire people by the South African government, but the descendents of ǂKhomani-dialect speakers now speak Khoikhoi. As of January 2013, only three speakers of the Nǀuu dialect and two of the ǁʼAu dialect remain.
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean to its south-southwest. It covers an area of and has a population of around 4,700,000 people. English is the official language and over 20 indigenous languages are spoken, representing the numerous ethnic groups who make up more than 95% of the population. The country's capital and largest city is Monrovia.
Malay is the main language spoken in the state, although with a different creole from Sarawak Malay and Peninsular Malay. The state has its own slang for Malay which originated either from indigenous words, Brunei Malay, Suluk, Cocos Malay and Indonesian language. The indigenous languages of Sabah can be divided into four language families of Dusunic, Murutic, Paitanic and Sama–Bajau. As the Hakka forms the majority of Chinese in Sabah, the Hakka dialect is the most commonly spoken Chinese dialect in the state apart from Cantonese and Hokkien dialects.
Swahili, known as Kiswahili to its speakers, is used throughout large parts of East Africa and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo as a lingua franca, despite being the mother tongue of a relatively small ethnic group on the East African coast and nearby islands in the Indian Ocean. At least as early as the late 18th century, Swahili was used along trading and slave routes that extended west across Lake Tanganyika and into the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili rose in prominence throughout the colonial era, and has become the predominant African language of Tanzania and Kenya. Some ethnic groups now speak Swahili more often than their mother tongues, and many, especially in urban areas, choose to raise their children with Swahili as their first language, leading to the possibility that several smaller East African languages will fade away as Swahili transitions from being a regional lingua franca to a regional first language.
Settla features a noun class system that differs from standard Swahili, which like most Bantu languages contains a rich noun class system. Since most Settla speakers are native speakers of English, which lacks a complex noun class system, Settla appears to also have a less complex noun class system than standard Swahili. Although there needs to be more research on the specifics, it can be concluded that the speakers of Settla do not disregard this system, but their patterns do most certainly differ from standard Swahili.
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.
Lingala is used by over 10 million speakers throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a large part of the Republic of the Congo, as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic, although it has only about two million native speakers. Its status is comparable to that of Swahili in eastern Africa.