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10 Most Commonly Spoken Bantu Languages

10 Most Commonly Spoken Bantu Languages

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More than 240 million people speak Bantu languages across Central, East, and Southern Africa but the exact number of languages differs according to who’s counting. More than 250 Bantu languages exist by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though some accounts list 535 distinct languages. Here are the 10 most commonly spoken Bantu languages.

Sources: Wikipedia.org, Ethnologue.com, Britannica.com, LMP.UCLA.com, InfoPlease.com, NationsOnline.org, Acalan.org, Princeton.edu.

This is an updated version of an AFKInsider article that was published April 15, 2014.
Kikuyu. Pinterest
Kikuyu. Pinterest

10. Kikuyu – 6 million

Kikuyu, or Gikuyu, is the language of Kenya’s Kikuyu people — the largest ethnic group. Approximately 22 percent of the country’s population speaks the language. There are four main dialects — Kirinyaga, Muranga, Nyeri, and Kiambu. The regions in which they are spoken are divided physically by the Central Province districts.

kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com
Mbundu people. kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com

9. Mbundu – 6 million

Mbundu is comprised of two langauges: Kimbundu, or North Mbundu, and Umbundu, or South Mbundu. They are spoken throughout Angola, and both reflect a heavy Portuguese influence from the country’s colonial period. A 1919 colonial decree banned the use of local languages in schools, making Portuguese obligatory. This reduced the number of native speakers, but Mbundu remains a prominently spoken language in Angola today.

LejaBulele.org
LejaBulele.org

8. Tshiluba – 7 million

Tshiluba, also known as Ciluba or Luba-Kasai in order to distinguish it from Luba-Katanga, is the national language in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. DRC residents also speak Lingala, Swahili, and Kikongo. Tshiluba is primarily spoken in the Kasaï Occidental and Kasaï Oriental provinces.

Xhosa-people-of-the-Eastern-Cape
Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape. afritorial.com

7. Xhosa – 7.6 million

Xhosa is one of several official languages in South Africa, and an estimated 18 percent of the country’s population speaks Xhosa as its first or second language. It is well distinguished by its unique clicking consonants from other Nguni languages, including Swati, Northern Ndebele, and Zulu. The majority of Xhosa speakers live in the Eastern Cape, though the Western Cape also boasts a sizable population of Xhosa speakers.

 

Burunidi. Photo: opusprize.org
Burundi. Photo: opusprize.org

6. Rundi – 9 million

Rundi, also known as Kirundi, is the official language of Burundi, but is also spoken in adjacent areas of Tanzania and Uganda. It’s similar to Kinyarwanda, and the two are often spoken of in tandem and referred to as Rwanda-Rundi. But they do have unique differences. Rundi is also very similar to Ha, spoken largely in Western Tanzania.

Lingala. Photo: migreat.co.uk
Lingala. Photo: migreat.co.uk

5. Lingala – 10 million

Spoken primarily in the northwestern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and large swaths of the Republic of Congo, Lingala is the product of a blending of several dialects that were historically spoken by peoples living along the Congo River. There are several variations of Lingala, with Standard Lingala used most widely in public and official spaces (including in education and media broadcasting), while Spoken Lingala is more common in day-to-day use.

 

Wildland.com
Wildland.com

4. Zulu – 10 million

The most widely spoken home language in South Africa (where nearly 95 percent of all Zulu-speakers live), Zulu is understood by approximately half of the country’s population. Though it is not an official language, many have chosen to study Zulu as a second language in accordance with South Africa’s matriculation requirements.

Teacher at Kimisagara primary school. Photo: NewTimes
Teacher at Kimisagara primary school. Photo: NewTimes

3. Kinyarwanda – 12 million

Also known as Ruanda or Rwandan, Kinyarwanda is the official language of Rwanda, though it is also spoken in Burundi and neighboring regions in Uganda. It is spoken by more than 98-percent of the native population of Rwanda — a dominance that is rare for a Bantu language, given that most counties’ boundaries do not correspond with pre-colonial boundaries. Kinyarwanda is spoken by several ethnicities in Rwanda, including Hutus, Tutsis, and the Twa.

The Zimbabwean band Mawungira Enharira sparked an interest in traditional Shona culture. Photo: berkeleyside.com
Popular Zimbabwean band Mawungira Enharira sparked an interest in traditional Shona culture. Photo: berkeleyside.com

2. Shona– 15 million

Shona, though it can be separated into several dialects (Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore, Ndau, and Manyika), is considered the most widely spoken Bantu language after Swahili. It is the principal language in Zimbabwe, along with Ndebele and English, but is also spoken throughout Zambia, Botswana, and Mozambique. It is considered to be the Bantu language with the most first-language speakers.

Mawungira Enharira, a hugely popular Zimbabwean band (pictured here) helped spark a resurgence of interest in traditional Shona culture at a time when the lure of Western pop music is hard for young Zimbabweans to resist. The band puts a sophisticated, contemporary spin on mbira, a folkloric Shona style played on the thumb piano, according to BerkeleySide.

AfricaTanzania.com
AfricaTanzania.com

1. Swahili – 140 million

Although about 5 million people speak Swahili as their first language, its use as a lingua franca across much of Southeast Africa accounts for its popularity. Spoken primarily in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the language carries a heavy Arabic influence, mainly through contact with Arabic-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the region.