Colleen Smith, age 15, of Carson City, Nev., for her question:
IS THERE ONE MAIN AFRICAN LANGUAGE?
More than 1,000 different languages are spoken by the people living on the African continent. There is no one main language. Apart from Arabic, a language that isn't confined only to Africa, the most widely spoken languages are Swahili and Hausa. Each has more than 10 million speakers.
Most of the African languages have about 200,000 speakers. About 20 of them have more than 1 million speakers.
Most of the African languages have no written literature.
The African languages are divided into four language families: Hamito Semitic or Afro Asiatic, Nilo Saharan, Khoisan and Niger Kordofanian.
A language family can be subdivided into many branches that are made up of many closely related languages. Many of the African languages have histories that go back more than 5,000 years.
The various African languages are as different from each other as Navajo, English and Chinese are.
Even within a family, various African languages can be as different in structure and sound as English, Russian and Hindi, all of which are in the same Indo European language family. Also, within a single family the African languages may be as closely related as are German, Dutch and Swedish.
Only half of the African languages have writing systems. Except for some of the languages of Ethiopia and for the Arabic languages, the alphabets of most African languages are based on adaptations of the Roman alphabet and were introduced by missionaries.
Some tribes, however, have developed their own syllabic writing systems. Included are the Vai in Liberia and the Bamum in Cameroon.
Leading scholars have thought that the many languages of Africa would eventually give way to the internationally important European languages, or to just a few of the major languages native to Africa. But this is not happening. Even though there are many contacts between Africans and those in the U.S. and Europe, the Africans are keeping their own languages. The birth of independent African nations has created a new pride in indigenous languages.
The Hamito Semitic family of languages make up the most important group of languages spoken in North Africa. One of the languages in this family is Hausa, one of the two most common languages of Africa. Hausa is used in education and trade and even in regions beyond its original borders. The body of Hausa literature is growing and a number of newspapers are printed in this language, too.
The Swahili language is the other of the two most common languages used in Africa. Swahili is spoken throughout East Africa for business and for communications among various tribes. It serves as the official language of Kenya and Tanzania. All of the Swahili people are of mixed Bantu and Arab ancestry. All of them are Muslims.
An interesting African language with not too many speakers is the Khoisan or Click language. Nearly every word starts with a click that is made by a sucking action of the tongue.