Language
The Yao speak a Bantu language known as Chiyao (chi- being the class prefix for "language"), with an estimated 1,000,000 speakers in Malawi, 495,000 in Mozambique, and 492,000 in Tanzania. The nationality's traditional homeland is located between the Rovuma and the Lugenda Rivers in northern Mozambique. Other major languages of Malawi include Chichewa and Chitimbuka. They also speak the official language of the countries they inhabit, Swahili in Tanzania, English in Malawi and Tanzania, and Portuguese in Mozambique.
Read more about this topic: Yao People (East Africa)
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“What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves. Yet the first symbols were animals. What distinguished men from animals was born of their relationship with them.”
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