Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...

is a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

country with an estimated 69 languages currently spoken.Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International.
(Page on "Languages of Côte d’Ivoire." This page indicates that one of the 79 no longer has any speakers.) The

official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...

is French. This language is taught in schools and serves as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

in the country, along with Dioula. Ivory Coast is a

Francophone The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus in 1880 and became important a ...

country; in 2024, an estimated 11.63 million people (36.42% out of a total of 31.93 million) spoke French. The 70 or so indigenous languages fall into five main branches of the Niger–Congo family. In the southeastern quadrant are

Kwa languages The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Ivory Coast, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo. The Kwa family belongs to the Niger-Congo ...

, some such as Baoulé and Anyin (2–3 million and 1 million speakers) part of a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

with Akan in Ghana, others such as Attié (or Akyé) (half a million) are more divergent. Baoulé is spoken east of Lake Kossou and at the capital

Yamoussoukro Yamoussoukro (; , locally ) is the capital city of Ivory Coast and an autonomous district. As of the 2014 census, Yamoussoukro is the fifth most populous city in the Ivory Coast, with a population of 212,670. Located north-west of Abidjan, the ...

, and Anyi along the Ghanaian border. In the southwestern quadrant are

Kru languages The Kru languages are spoken by the Kru people from the southeast of Liberia to the west of Ivory Coast. Classification According to Güldemann (2018), Kru lacks sufficient lexical resemblances and noun class resemblances to conclude a relatio ...

, such as Bete and We ( Gure/ Wobe), half a million apiece, and Dida (a quarter million), related to the languages of Liberia. In the northwest, along the Guinean border and across to Lake Kossou in the center of the country, are

Mande languages The Mande languages are a family of languages spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples. They include Maninka (Malinke), Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Jula (Dioula), Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are ar ...

, such as Dan (1 million speakers) and Guro (half a million, on the lake). The lake and the river Bandama divide the Kwa east of the country from the Kru and Mande west. Across the center north are various

Senufo languages The Senufo or Senufic languages () comprise around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo people, Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra language, Nafaanra, is also spok ...

, such as Senari (1 million speakers). In the northeast corner, surrounding Comoé National Park, are a quarter million speakers each of Kulango, the

Gur language The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern Ivor ...

Lobi, and the Mande language Jula (), which is a ''

'' of neighboring

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...

. There are also three million or so speakers of immigrant languages, mostly from neighboring countries and above all from Burkina Faso. Ethnic tensions in the north between immigrant and native Ivoirians, as well as between the Mande/Senoufo north and the Kru/Kwa south, were a large factor in the Ivorian civil wars. Education for the deaf in Ivory Coast uses

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...

, introduced by the deaf American missionary Andrew Foster.

References

Sources

''Ethnologue''
list and map for Ivory Coast
PanAfrican L10n page on Ivory Coast
*

References

Sources

See also