The dialects (or languages) may or may not be mutually intelligible. It’s a dialect continuum spoken by the Berber people in North Africa. Berber (Amazigh)īerber, or Amazigh, is sometimes referred to as a language, sometimes as a language family. They speak local Arabic dialects, but Modern Standard Arabic is used in writing and in the media. Most African Arabic speakers live in North Africa, where Arabic is the majority language. As a result, it’s the most common native language on the continent overall. Official language in Algeria, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Western SaharaĪrabic didn’t originate in Africa, but today it’s the mother tongue of over 140 million Africans. Number of L1 speakers: 140 million in Africa, 280 million around the world So, first of all, here are the most spoken native languages in Africa.

And when it comes to marketing, advertising and web copy, people tend to prefer their native language. However, L2 speakers vary in proficiency. The most spoken African languages by number of native speakersīecause many Africans are at least bilingual, there are two possible ways to determine the most spoken African languages: by the number of native speakers or by overall numbers, including L2 speakers.īy focusing on the languages with the most L1 plus L2 speakers, you can expand the reach of your content. Whether you’re a business or an NGO, if you’re trying to maximize the number of people you can reach in Africa, you need to study the most spoken African languages in your particular market. When you think of Africa, what do you think of? The iconic wildlife? The horror stories of poverty, hunger, and war? The truth is that Africa is an incredibly large, incredibly diverse and rapidly developing continent.

African pidgin language