There are an estimated 2000 official languages spoken in Africa. There are many other small families and languages, as well as obscure languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages. Several African languages are whistled or drummed to communicate over long distances.About a hundred of the languages of Africa are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. Berber, Arabic, Igbo, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, and Yoruba are spoken by tens of millions of people.
There are four major groups of African languages: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharian, Niger-Saharian (Niger-Congo), and Khoisan, on the map below, you see the distribution of language and some major African languages.
Below shows another picture of where certain languages of Africa are spoken:
However, with this high diversity of many languages, it has made language policy a vital issue in the post-colonial era.
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