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Blog: 6 January 2017 (Interactive language maps)
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In today's blog we take a look at the number of people in South Africa's municipalities that speak a specific language, and then based on inputs from one of our twitter followers we will take a look at bilingualism (Thanks Bernard Swanepoel. Twitter @zbswanepoel ). Note the maps are interactive and if you dont like what you did to the map there is a undo button at bottom left hand corner of the map
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Hello, Sawubona, Molo, Dumela
So South Africa has 11 official languages. And a large number of these languages are clustered in specific areas. For example Afrikaans in Gauteng and Western Cape, Zulu in KwaZulu-Natal, Xhoso mostly in Eatern Cape, Siswati in Mpumalanga, Sepedi in Limpopo etc.
The interactive map below shows the number of people per municipality that speaks a specific language as 1st language (or mother tongue). Users can select any language by clicking on the language of their choice. The map will then highlight this language. If users want to select multiple languages, they can press the control key while selecting the languages they desire.
By just looking at the map its clear that Afrikaans is clustered in the Western and Northern Cape (the concentration of the orange dots). Xhosa being the main language in the Eastern Cape. Sesotho in the Free State, Setswana in North West, SiSwati in Mpumalanga, Zulu in KwaZulu-Natal, Sepedi in the middle parts of Limpopo and to the north if Limpopo close to the Zimbabwe border a large number of people speak Tshivenda. Ndibele being spoken mostly in the north west parts of Mpumalanga. This map clearly shows how diverse South Africa is, without looking at anything else the map alone tells a 1000 words about South Africa and why it has 11 official languages.
The map below looks at the number of people that speak English and another language. The percentages in the bubbles shows a specific municipalitues contribution to the total percentage of people speaking a specific language combination. For example if a user selects % of Total Afrikaans-English 19.63% of all people that can speak English and Afrikaans is located in the municipality of the City of Cape Town
The main language combination spoken in South Africa is English and Zulu with 18million people speaking both. Second place goes to English and Xhosa with 14.4million speaking both and in third place its English and Afrikaans with 13million speaking both. See below for breakdown of language combinations.
- English-IsiZulu:18 006 235
- English-IsiXhosa:144 37 524
- English-Afrikaans:13 297 875
- English-Sepedi:10 914 929
- English-Setswana:10 367 864
- English-Sesotho:10 191 076
- English-Xitsonga:8 556 329
- English-SiSwati:7 547 690
- English-Tshivenda:7 449 769
- English-IsiNdebele:7 355 270
So to those wondering what African language thy should learn to communicate better with South African's in their mother tongue. Seems your best bet is to go for Zulu or Xhosa.
And with this we say Hamba kahle to all our readers. Until next time
And with this we say Hamba kahle to all our readers. Until next time