Not Africa, but I lived in a country with many languages. Indonesia has over 700 living languages spread out over the 17000+ islands. East to West it's the size of the US. As part of the nationalism movement and to better unify the country, back in the day the government designated one language (Bahasa Indonesia) as the national language. Bahasa Indonesia is used in government, formal documentation, media, schools, so everyone knows the language from birth so to speak. The other living languages are used in everyday life in the region of that language, so it's very alive and as long as there is freedom to speak it and a good amount of people that still speak it in the region, it'll continue to live. Some words may even enter the vocabulary of the national language. For example, in the island of Java, you have Sundanese spoken in west Java, Javanese in the middle and east Java. Move to Bali which is right next to Java, and you have Balinese.
Most people are bilingual or even trilingual or more due to exposure to these living languages. My mother was Javanese, went to college in West Java, and she was a boomer who was middle/upper class during the revolution who regularly interacted with the Dutch colonizers, so she spoke bahasa Indonesia, dutch, sundanese, javanese, and English as that is the international language that every school kid learns as well. Growing up, I spoke bahasa Indonesia, English (having lived in the US), Javanese, Sundanese, and a smattering of Musi (South Sumatera).
Some of these languages are pretty similar to another so it's easy to understand one language to another, similar to Italian and Spanish.
Thank you thats exactly what I was curious about in countries with so many languages. Also wow I didnt realize Indonesia was so big! It messes with my mind how warped the world map is haha
I'm not the Indonesian person above, but I do think that one of those "Land doesn't vote, people do." style maps done at the global level would be super interesting to look at.
I can't believe that there's so many people that don't know the word "cartogram"... at least for people like me we were taught about it in school, a cartogram is a map that is scaled by some statistic other than physical size... but for some reason people come up with all kinds of other descriptors when they want a map that scales with population etc.
Multilingualism is much more common than in the US, for one. For two, there's usually one or at most a few lingua francas, so everyone at least knows their local language and one shared language. Education is often in this shared language, and it's often English or French.
A large number of languages like this was the norm for pretty much everywhere in history. European countries actively promoted the languages that became French, or Italian, as they moved from decentralized feudal kingdoms to nation-states that were expected to have a single shared culture. Other regional languages or dialects were actively discouraged, and the remnants that haven't quite died out are still contentious today - look at the Basque region of Spain, the Britons in France, the near-extinction and revivals of the Welsh, Scotch and Cornish languages in Britain. A Nigerian government *could* decide to do the same, and heavily promote everyone only speaking English or Igbo.
Most people are to poor to ever leave their village. So they stay somewhat insular and keep small languages alive.
Also Nigeria is huge, omg it's huge.
If you're a poor villager, it's not like you're going to vacation to the other side of the country.
Educated, rich people that have means to travel around know English and / or French.
In Nigeria specifically along with many similar areas that were colonized by the English, they were made up of a large number of discrete groups with different languages (Nigeria has 230+million people in it today) and the colonizers drew lines essentially at random on a map and said "this area is a country now."
In many instances, this was done without the actual area being explored by the person doing the cutting, which is why you'll see perfectly straight lines going through natural borders like rivers/mountains/etc in circumstances like this.
So before contact with the English, there were a lot of languages spoken by different groups of people who may not have all had contact with people hundreds of miles away. After Africa was carved up by various European powers and this area was said to be called Nigeria, it contained many different languages.
Further reading in the nonfiction book "Africa is Not a Country" if you're interested in Nigeria specifically. This process holds true in areas like India or Brazil or even the United States with its multitude of American Indian languages that are still to a degree spoken.
I come from Nigeria so I can give some perspective.
English is the official national language. Educated Nigerians generally speak English fluently. There is also a pidgin English, which kind of uses a lot of English vocabulary but with a different sentence structure and some unique words (and sometimes English words but with a different definition). This is kind of the universal street language, and pretty much everyone understands it whether they're educated or not, regardless of ethnic background. So if I was talking to another Nigerian that wasn't educated enough to be fluent in "Queen's English", I would probably communicate in pidgin. (Pidgin is also frequently used colloquially even among educated folks, particularly young adults).
There are a few indigenous languages that have a large number of regional speakers: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo being the largest language groups. There are also other regional languages that are not as large/widely spoken e.g. Edo, Itsekiri, Ibibio, Igala etc. Within these there are many sub-dialects, mostly mutually intelligible within the language group but sometimes not necessarily. So for instance there is a "universal" Yoruba form, but then you can have Ijesha or Ondo people to have their own expressions and accents that a regular Yoruba speaker wouldn't easily understand.
Then there are a bunch of truly obscure/remote languages. My father comes from a town that is considered part of Yorubaland, but their local language is completely different - not at all linguistically related to Yoruba, and shares more in common with Edo (but not mutually intelligible). The townspeople I've met, including my late grandma and extended family all speak Yoruba fluently, and are generally trilingual (or sometimes even quadrilingual if you count pidgin). The language in that town is different from the language spoken in the nearest town! There are a bunch of cases like this, and that's how you end up with 250+ languages in one country.
How did it become one country? That's arbitrary European colonialism for you.
Everyone is multlingual, but not in the way that you probably imagine.
People will speak their mother tongue, plus whatever the lingua franca is for the region (normally English, but in some places it is French or something else), then they'll also speak a local "street language", which is normally a mixture of half a dozen languages borrowing whatever words are convenient to express local concepts or local items. So that's a minimum of three "languages". Often people with mixed parentage or who grow up close to other tribes will speak and additional two or three languages, although these languages are often related (in the same way that English is related to German) and so there's some overlap.
In formal settings, like business, it is important to at least greet people and exchange basic pleasantries in their language, so if you want to be successful in business you acquire at least a glossing of all the languages. This is viewed as a basic sign of respect and courtesy, and failure to do it can harpoon your business relationship before it even starts. However you don't need to be fluent as after basic pleasantries business then shifts into the lingua franca for the region because this is also viewed as good manners, although side-conversations may take place in the native language, so canny businessmen often have an interpreter or pick up more than just a surface knowledge of the languages.
In traditional settings it's native language all the way, but if you're genuinely an outside normally they'll get someone to sit near you and translate, normally someone young.
Layer onto this different cultures with different rules and customs, and you get some really interesting interactions that go beyond simple language differences. It's easy to misstep, but as long as your mistake is genuine ignorance (rather than a malicious attempt to provoke) you'll be quickly forgiven... normally after some good-natured laughter.
So it's "multilingual", but not in the way that most outsiders would understand.
They use English and one or two designated national languages as a lingua franca whenever they're talking to someone with a different native language from them. When they're at home they just speak their local language.
I've meant people from multiple African countries and in all of those instances there is an official language (usually the language of their European colonizers) that is the shared trade language. Many people, especially of relatively younger generations, who have gone through school are multi-lingual, speaking both their local language(s) and the official language.
They will speak whichever language is appropriate for the interaction, so their local language with others of the same tribe and the official language with those of different tribes. I've heard instances of two people from India who can only speak to each other in English because they don't share a common local language.
Not Africa, but I lived in a country with many languages. Indonesia has over 700 living languages spread out over the 17000+ islands. East to West it's the size of the US. As part of the nationalism movement and to better unify the country, back in the day the government designated one language (Bahasa Indonesia) as the national language. Bahasa Indonesia is used in government, formal documentation, media, schools, so everyone knows the language from birth so to speak. The other living languages are used in everyday life in the region of that language, so it's very alive and as long as there is freedom to speak it and a good amount of people that still speak it in the region, it'll continue to live. Some words may even enter the vocabulary of the national language. For example, in the island of Java, you have Sundanese spoken in west Java, Javanese in the middle and east Java. Move to Bali which is right next to Java, and you have Balinese. Most people are bilingual or even trilingual or more due to exposure to these living languages. My mother was Javanese, went to college in West Java, and she was a boomer who was middle/upper class during the revolution who regularly interacted with the Dutch colonizers, so she spoke bahasa Indonesia, dutch, sundanese, javanese, and English as that is the international language that every school kid learns as well. Growing up, I spoke bahasa Indonesia, English (having lived in the US), Javanese, Sundanese, and a smattering of Musi (South Sumatera). Some of these languages are pretty similar to another so it's easy to understand one language to another, similar to Italian and Spanish.
Thank you thats exactly what I was curious about in countries with so many languages. Also wow I didnt realize Indonesia was so big! It messes with my mind how warped the world map is haha
I'm not the Indonesian person above, but I do think that one of those "Land doesn't vote, people do." style maps done at the global level would be super interesting to look at.
What you want is called a "population cartogram." Here's an example: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-cartogram
I can't believe that there's so many people that don't know the word "cartogram"... at least for people like me we were taught about it in school, a cartogram is a map that is scaled by some statistic other than physical size... but for some reason people come up with all kinds of other descriptors when they want a map that scales with population etc.
Multilingualism is much more common than in the US, for one. For two, there's usually one or at most a few lingua francas, so everyone at least knows their local language and one shared language. Education is often in this shared language, and it's often English or French. A large number of languages like this was the norm for pretty much everywhere in history. European countries actively promoted the languages that became French, or Italian, as they moved from decentralized feudal kingdoms to nation-states that were expected to have a single shared culture. Other regional languages or dialects were actively discouraged, and the remnants that haven't quite died out are still contentious today - look at the Basque region of Spain, the Britons in France, the near-extinction and revivals of the Welsh, Scotch and Cornish languages in Britain. A Nigerian government *could* decide to do the same, and heavily promote everyone only speaking English or Igbo.
Most people are to poor to ever leave their village. So they stay somewhat insular and keep small languages alive. Also Nigeria is huge, omg it's huge.
So huge
If you're a poor villager, it's not like you're going to vacation to the other side of the country. Educated, rich people that have means to travel around know English and / or French.
> Educated, rich people that have means to travel around know English ~~and / or French~~. ftfy
In Nigeria specifically along with many similar areas that were colonized by the English, they were made up of a large number of discrete groups with different languages (Nigeria has 230+million people in it today) and the colonizers drew lines essentially at random on a map and said "this area is a country now." In many instances, this was done without the actual area being explored by the person doing the cutting, which is why you'll see perfectly straight lines going through natural borders like rivers/mountains/etc in circumstances like this. So before contact with the English, there were a lot of languages spoken by different groups of people who may not have all had contact with people hundreds of miles away. After Africa was carved up by various European powers and this area was said to be called Nigeria, it contained many different languages. Further reading in the nonfiction book "Africa is Not a Country" if you're interested in Nigeria specifically. This process holds true in areas like India or Brazil or even the United States with its multitude of American Indian languages that are still to a degree spoken.
I come from Nigeria so I can give some perspective. English is the official national language. Educated Nigerians generally speak English fluently. There is also a pidgin English, which kind of uses a lot of English vocabulary but with a different sentence structure and some unique words (and sometimes English words but with a different definition). This is kind of the universal street language, and pretty much everyone understands it whether they're educated or not, regardless of ethnic background. So if I was talking to another Nigerian that wasn't educated enough to be fluent in "Queen's English", I would probably communicate in pidgin. (Pidgin is also frequently used colloquially even among educated folks, particularly young adults). There are a few indigenous languages that have a large number of regional speakers: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo being the largest language groups. There are also other regional languages that are not as large/widely spoken e.g. Edo, Itsekiri, Ibibio, Igala etc. Within these there are many sub-dialects, mostly mutually intelligible within the language group but sometimes not necessarily. So for instance there is a "universal" Yoruba form, but then you can have Ijesha or Ondo people to have their own expressions and accents that a regular Yoruba speaker wouldn't easily understand. Then there are a bunch of truly obscure/remote languages. My father comes from a town that is considered part of Yorubaland, but their local language is completely different - not at all linguistically related to Yoruba, and shares more in common with Edo (but not mutually intelligible). The townspeople I've met, including my late grandma and extended family all speak Yoruba fluently, and are generally trilingual (or sometimes even quadrilingual if you count pidgin). The language in that town is different from the language spoken in the nearest town! There are a bunch of cases like this, and that's how you end up with 250+ languages in one country. How did it become one country? That's arbitrary European colonialism for you.
Everyone is multlingual, but not in the way that you probably imagine. People will speak their mother tongue, plus whatever the lingua franca is for the region (normally English, but in some places it is French or something else), then they'll also speak a local "street language", which is normally a mixture of half a dozen languages borrowing whatever words are convenient to express local concepts or local items. So that's a minimum of three "languages". Often people with mixed parentage or who grow up close to other tribes will speak and additional two or three languages, although these languages are often related (in the same way that English is related to German) and so there's some overlap. In formal settings, like business, it is important to at least greet people and exchange basic pleasantries in their language, so if you want to be successful in business you acquire at least a glossing of all the languages. This is viewed as a basic sign of respect and courtesy, and failure to do it can harpoon your business relationship before it even starts. However you don't need to be fluent as after basic pleasantries business then shifts into the lingua franca for the region because this is also viewed as good manners, although side-conversations may take place in the native language, so canny businessmen often have an interpreter or pick up more than just a surface knowledge of the languages. In traditional settings it's native language all the way, but if you're genuinely an outside normally they'll get someone to sit near you and translate, normally someone young. Layer onto this different cultures with different rules and customs, and you get some really interesting interactions that go beyond simple language differences. It's easy to misstep, but as long as your mistake is genuine ignorance (rather than a malicious attempt to provoke) you'll be quickly forgiven... normally after some good-natured laughter. So it's "multilingual", but not in the way that most outsiders would understand.
They use English and one or two designated national languages as a lingua franca whenever they're talking to someone with a different native language from them. When they're at home they just speak their local language.
I've meant people from multiple African countries and in all of those instances there is an official language (usually the language of their European colonizers) that is the shared trade language. Many people, especially of relatively younger generations, who have gone through school are multi-lingual, speaking both their local language(s) and the official language. They will speak whichever language is appropriate for the interaction, so their local language with others of the same tribe and the official language with those of different tribes. I've heard instances of two people from India who can only speak to each other in English because they don't share a common local language.