Portuguese is the only official language of

Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...

, but over 46 other languages are spoken in the country, mostly

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

European languages

Portuguese is the sole

official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...

. Due to cultural, social and political mechanisms which date back to the colonial history, the number of native Portuguese speakers is large and growing. A 2012 study by the Angolan National Institute for Statistics found that Portuguese is the mother tongue of 39% of the population. It is spoken as a

second language A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which ...

by many more throughout the country, and younger urban generations are moving towards the dominant or exclusive use of Portuguese. The 2014 population census found that about 71% of the nearly 25.8 million inhabitants of Angola speak Portuguese at home. In urban areas, 85% of the population declared to speak Portuguese at home in the 2014 census, against 49% in rural areas. Portuguese was adopted by Angolans in the mid-twentieth century as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

among the various ethnic groups. After the

Angolan Civil War The Angolan Civil War () was a civil war in Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. It was a power struggle between two for ...

, many people moved to the cities where they learned Portuguese. When they returned to the countryside, more people were speaking Portuguese as a first language. The variant of the Portuguese language used in Angola is known as

Angolan Portuguese Portuguese is the official language of Angola. Angolan Portuguese () is a group of dialects and accents of Portuguese used in Angola. In 2005 it was used there by 60% of the population, including by 20% as their first language. The 2016 CIA '' ...

. Phonetically, this variant is very similar to the Mozambican variant with some exceptions. Some believe that Angolan Portuguese resembles a pidgin in some aspects. However, in Cabinda, wedged between two French-speaking countries — the

DRC The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

and the Congo — many people speak French as well as, or better than, Portuguese. In fact, of the literate population, 90 percent speak French while 10 percent speak Portuguese. Also, the Angolan

Bakongo The Kongo people (also , singular: or ''M'kongo; , , singular: '') are a Bantu ethnic group primarily defined as the speakers of Kikongo. Subgroups include the Beembe, Bwende, Vili, Sundi, Yombe, Dondo, Lari, and others. They have li ...

who were exiled in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

usually speak better French and

Lingala Lingala (or Ngala, Lingala: ) is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser de ...

than Portuguese and Kikongo.

African languages

All native languages of Angola are considered to be

national language '' '' A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection— de facto or de jure—with a nation. The term is applied quite differently in various contexts. One or more languages spoken as first languag ...

s. After independence, the government said it would choose six to be developed as

literary language Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal language. ...

s. The six languages vary between government pronouncements, but commonly included are

Umbundu Umbundu, or South Mbundu (autonym ''úmbúndú''), one of many Bantu languages, is the most widely-spoken autochthonous language of Angola. Its speakers are known as ''Ovimbundu'' and are an ethnic group constituting a third of Angola's populati ...

Kimbundu Kimbundu, a Bantu language which has sometimes been called Mbundu or North Mbundu (to distinguish it from Umbundu, sometimes called South Mbundu), is the second-most-widely-spoken Bantu language in Angola. Its speakers are concentrated in the n ...

, Kikongo (presumably the Fiote of Cabinda), Chokwe, Kwanyama (Ovambo), and Mbunda (never clearly defined; may be Nyemba, Luchazi, or indeterminate). Angolan radio transmits in fourteen of the "main" national languages: Bangala ('Mbangala'), Chokwe, Fiote, Herero ('Helelo'), Kikongo,

, Kwanyama, Lunda, Ngangela, Ngoya, Nyaneka, Ovambo ('Oxiwambo'), Songo,

. Some of the national languages are used in Angolan schools, including the provision of teaching materials such as books, but there is a shortage of teachers. Umbundu is the most widely spoken Bantu language, spoken natively by about 23 percent of the population, about 5.9 million. It is mainly spoken in the center and south of the country. Kimbundu is spoken in

Luanda Province Luanda is a province of Angola. It used to cover an area of 18,835 km2, and had a population of 6,945,386 at the Census of 16 May 2014. The city of Luanda is the capital of the province and Angola. It serves as the country's primary port, cultur ...

and adjacent provinces. Kikongo is spoken in the northwest, including the exclave of Cabinda. About 8.24% of Angolans use Kikongo. Fiote is spoken by about 2.9%, mainly in Cabinda. Lingala is also spoken in Angola. The

San people The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200 ...

speak languages from two families, the !Kung and Khoe, though only a few hundred speak the latter. The majority of San fled to South Africa after the end of the civil war. The extinct Kwadi language may have been distantly related to Khoe, and Kwisi is entirely unknown; their speakers were neither Khoisan nor Bantu.

Asian languages

A (very small) number of Angolans of Lebanese descent speak

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and/or French. Due to increasing Angola-China relations, there is now a

sinophone Sinophone, which means "Chinese language, Chinese-speaking", typically refers to an individual who speaks at least one Varieties of Chinese, variety of Chinese (that is, one of the Sinitic languages). Academic writers often use the term Sinophone ...

community of about 300,000.

List of Languages of Angola

Listed below are the languages of Angola.

Foreign languages

The foreign languages most taught at school are English and French. The Angolan Government has planned to make English a compulsory subject in the future.

Notes

References

External links

*Tola Akindipe, Geofrey Kakaula & Alcino Joné
Largest Chokwe language resource on the internet (Mofeko)
*Tola Akindipe, André Tati
Largest Ibinda (Fiote) language resource on the web (Mofeko)PanAfrican L10n page on AngolaEthnologue Listing of Angolan Languagesendangeredlanguages.com
{{Angola topics