The most common language spoken as a first language by South Africans is Zulu (23%), followed by Xhosa (16%), and Afrikaans (14%). English is the fourth most common first language in the country (9.6%), but is understood in most urban areas and is the dominant language in government and the media. , in English,
Afrikaans and
Tswana The majority of South Africans speak a language from one of the two principal branches of the native
Bantu languages that are represented in South Africa: the
Sotho–Tswana branch (which includes Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho and Tswana languages officially), or the
Nguni branch (which includes Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele languages officially). For each of the two groups, the languages within that group are for the most part intelligible to a native speaker of any other language within that group. The indigenous African languages of South Africa which are official, and therefore dominant, can be divided into two geographical zones, with Nguni languages being predominant in the south-eastern third of the country (Indian Ocean coast) and Sotho-Tswana languages being predominant in the northern third of the country located further inland, as also in
Botswana and
Lesotho.
Gauteng is the most linguistically heterogeneous province, with roughly equal numbers of Nguni, Sotho-Tswana and Indo-European language speakers, with Khoekhoe influence. This has resulted in the spread of an urban argot,
Tsotsitaal or S'Camtho/Ringas, in large urban townships in the province, which has spread nationwide. Tsotsitaal in its original form as "Flaaitaal" was based on Afrikaans, a colonial language derived from
Dutch, which is the most widely spoken language in the western half of the country (
Western and
Northern Cape). Afrikaans is spoken as first language by approximately 61 percent of whites and 76 percent of
Coloured people. This racial term is popularly considered to mean "
mixed race", as it represents to some degree a creole population many of whom are descendants of slave populations imported by the
Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) from slaving posts in West and East Africa, and from its colonies of the
Indian Ocean trade route. Political exiles from the VOC colony of
Batavia were also brought to the Cape, and these formed a major influencing force in the formation of Afrikaans, particularly in its
Malay influence, and
its early Jawi literature. Primary of these was the founder of Islam at the Cape, Sheikh Abadin Tadia Tjoessoep (known as Sheikh Yusuf).
Hajji Yusuf was an Indonesian noble of royal descent, being the nephew of the Sultan Alauddin of
Gowa, in today
Makassar,
Nusantara. Yusuf, along with 49 followers including two wives, two concubines and twelve children, were received in the Cape on 2 April 1694 by governor
Simon van der Stel. They were housed on the farm Zandvliet, far outside of
Cape Town, in an attempt to minimise his influence on the VOC's slaves. The plan failed however; Yusuf's settlement (called
Macassar) soon became a sanctuary for slaves and it was here that the first cohesive
Islamic community in South Africa was established. From here the message of Islam was disseminated to the slave community of Cape Town, and this population was foundational in the formation of Afrikaans. Of particular note is the
Cape Muslim pioneering of the first Afrikaans literature, written in
Arabic Afrikaans, which was an adaptation of the
Jawi script, using Arabic letters to represent Afrikaans for both religious and quotidian purposes. It also became the de facto national language of the
Griqua (Xiri or Griekwa) nation, which was a mixed race group. Afrikaans is also spoken widely across the centre and north of the country, as a second (or third or even fourth) language by Black or Indigenous South Africans (which, in South Africa, popularly means
SiNtu-speaking populations) living in farming areas. The
2011 census recorded the following distribution of first language speakers: – first spoken by immigrants from Portugal, especially
Madeira and later black and white settlers and refugees from
Angola and
Mozambique after they won independence from
Portugal and now by more recent immigrants from those countries again – and increasingly French, spoken by immigrants and refugees from
Francophone Central Africa. More recently, speakers of
North, Central and
West Africa languages have arrived in South Africa, mostly in the major cities, especially in
Johannesburg and
Pretoria, but also
Cape Town and
Durban.
Angloromani is spoken by the South African
Roma minority. ==Constitutional provisions==