SOUTH AFRICAN LANGUAGES 2001

Language Number of speakers* % of total

Afrikaans 5 983 420 13.35%

English 3 673 206 8.2%

IsiNdebele 711 825 1.59%

IsiXhosa 7 907 149 17.64%

IsiZulu 10 677 315 23.82%

Sesotho sa Leboa 4 208 974 9.39%

Sesotho 3 555 192 7.93%

Setswana 3 677 010 8.2%

SiSwati 1 194 433 2.66%

Tshivenda 1 021 761 2.28%

Xitsonga 1 992 201 4.44%

Other 217 291 0.48%

TOTAL 44 819 777 100%

Nonrhotic. They may have final postvocalic /r/ and

a medial /r/ as trill or tap. It has observed an initial obstruent (fricative) /r/, in such phrases as

 red, red rose

Variations in ACCENT depend usually on education, social class, domicile (rural or urban), and accommodation to speakers of varieties 

the vowel /ɪ/ as in bit or  pin becomes in SCHWA /ə/

Sentence initiators such as affirmative no:

e.g. How are you?—No, I'm fine(it comes probably from

Dutch/Afrikaans)

 The suffixed phrase and them.e.g.

  We saw Billy and them in town (‘Billy and the others’)

Extensive use of Afrikaans ‘modal adverbs

E.g.  sommer (‘just’) in We were sommer standing

around.

The source for distinctively South African words are: Dutch/Afrikaans 50%, English 30%, African languages 10%, other languages 10%. The most recent years show an increasing proportion of items of Afrikaner: boer, trek, and veld,