Language
In the Horn of Africa, Afro-Asiatic languages predominate, including Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya and Somali. Further south in the African Great Lakes region, Bantu languages like Kikuyu and Kamba are most widely spoken; Nilo-Saharan languages, such as Luo, Kalenjin and Maasai, are also spoken in lesser numbers. Swahili, with at least 80 million speakers (as a first or second language), is an important trade language in the Great Lakes area, and has official status in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. European languages such as English, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent French, remain important in higher institutions in some parts of the larger region.
Read more about this topic: East Africa
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of the mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
““What may this mean? Language of Man pronounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“I now thinke, Love is rather deafe, than blind,
For else it could not be,
That she,
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me,
And cast my love behind:
I’m sure my language to her, was as sweet,
And every close did meet
In sentence, of as subtile feet,
As hath the youngest Hee,”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)