Languages
The official language of Libya is Standard Arabic. The prevalent spoken language is Libyan Arabic, spoken by about 6 million Libyans, besides other Arabic dialects (partly spoken by immigrant workers, partly by native populations), viz. Egyptian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic, South Levantine Arabic and Hassaniyya Arabic, amounting to a total number of first-language Arabic speakers of about 95% of total population.
SIL Ethnologue estimates for indigenous minority languages in Libya:
- Berber languages: ca. 305,000 speakers
- Nafusi: 184,000 (2006)
- Tamahaq: 47,000 (2006)
- Ghadamès: 30,000 (2006)
- Sawknah: 5,600 (2006)
- Awjilah: 3,000 (2000)
- Domari: ca. 33,000 speakers (2006)
- Tedaga: 2,000
Non-Arabic languages spoken by temporary foreign workers include (with more than 10,000 speakers each): Punjabi, Urdu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Sinhala, Bengali, Tamil, Tagalog, French, Italian, Ukrainian, Serbian, English.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Libya
Famous quotes containing the word languages:
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name.”
—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)