2010 reading newspaper Mozambique 4863034891

Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...

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. A number of

Bantu languages The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...

are indigenous to Mozambique. Portuguese, inherited from the colonial period (''see:

Portuguese Mozambique Portuguese Mozambique () or Portuguese East Africa () were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese overseas province. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a str ...

''), is the official language, and Mozambique is a full member of the

Community of Portuguese Language Countries The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (; : CPLP), also known as the Lusophone Commonwealth or Lusophone Community (), is an international organization and political association of Lusophone nations across four continents, where Portug ...

. ''Ethnologue'' lists 43 languages spoken in the country. According to INE, the National Institute of Statistics of Mozambique, Portuguese is the most widely spoken language in Mozambique: according to the 2007 national population and housing census, 50.4% of the national population aged 5 and older (80.8% of people living in urban areas and 36.3% in rural areas) are fluent in the language. The 2017 national population and housing census found out that Portuguese is spoken by 47.4% of all Mozambicans aged 5 and older, with native speakers making up 16.6% of the population (38.3% in the cities and 5.1% in rural areas, respectively). Portuguese is spoken as a native language by around 50% of the population in Maputo. Mozambique has 22 Bantu origin languages which are: Swahili, Makhuwa, Sena, Ndau, Tswa-Ronga (Tsonga), Lomwe, Ekoti, Nahara, Makonde, Chopi, Chuwabu,

Ronga Ronga (XiRonga; sometimes ShiRonga or GiRonga) is a Bantu language of the Tswa–Ronga branch spoken just south of Maputo in Mozambique. It extends a little into South Africa. It has about 650,000 speakers in Mozambique and a further 90,000 in ...

Kimwani The Mwani language, also known by its native name Kimwani, ( ) is a Bantu language spoken on the coast of the Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, including the Quirimbas Islands. Although it shares high lexical similarity (60%) with Swahili, it ...

, Nhungwe, Chimanika, Shona, Chiyao,

Chichewa Chewa ( ; also known as Nyanja ) is a Bantu language spoken in Malawi and a recognised minority in Zambia and Mozambique. The noun class prefix ''chi-'' is used for languages, so the language is often called or Chinyanja. In Malawi, the name wa ...

, Bitonga, Ngoni, Tswa and Chitewe. The language of the deaf community is Mozambican Sign Language. Small communities of

Arabs Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of yea ...

, Chinese, and

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

ns (primarily the

Gujarati language Gujarati ( ; , ) is an Indo-Aryan language native to the Indian state of Gujarat and spoken predominantly by the Gujarati people. Gujarati is descended from Old Western Rājasthāni, Old Gujarati (). In India, it is one of the 22 Languages with ...

) speak their own languages (Indians from

Portuguese India The State of India, also known as the Portuguese State of India or Portuguese India, was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded seven years after the discovery of the sea route to the Indian subcontinent by Vasco da Gama, a subject of the ...

speak any of the

Portuguese Creole Portuguese creoles () are creole languages which have Portuguese as their substantial lexifier. The most widely-spoken creoles influenced by Portuguese are Cape Verdean Creole, Guinea-Bissau Creole and Papiamento. Origins Portuguese overse ...

s of their origin) aside from Portuguese as their second language. Article 9 of Mozambique's constitution provides for the recognition of ''national languages'' and that such languages be considered of "cultural and educational heritage" and that the state "shall promote their development and increasing use as languages that convey our identity". Portuguese is deemed the country's ''official language'' by article 10.

Sociolinguistics

Multilingualism

Most Mozambicans speak more than one language. According to the Mozambican MINEDH, primary education will become fully bilingual, starting in 2017, and include 16 Mozambican languages, followed by Portuguese as a foreign language. According to the 2007 census, about 50.4% of all people aged 5 and older speak Portuguese, and 10.7%, including people of Portuguese ancestry and mestiços, speak it as their first language. Use of the Portuguese language remains strongly concentrated to the urban population of Mozambique along the coast.

Linguistic geography

The map shows the dominant language by region. Additionally, the second map shows where Portuguese has become a native language of over 10% of the population. Portuguese - Native and Official

Influence among languages

Many indigenous languages of Mozambique have loan words of Portuguese origin.

Largest language groups

References

External links

Ethnologue Listing of Mozambican Languages

Línguas de Moçambique
– A Portuguese-language collection of publications in Mozambican languages. (A Google Translate Gadget is available) {{Mozambique-stub stub