Speak the continent
Learn an African language.
Ten starter courses of human-checked vocabulary, drilled in short gamified lessons — with an AI coach for each language that practises with you, corrects you and explains the culture behind the words.
Swahili
HabariKiswahili
A Bantu language shaped on the Indian Ocean coast, with Arabic, Persian, Portuguese and Indian loanwords from a thousand years of trade. It is an official language of the African Union.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu)
- Spoken in
- Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda
Yoruba
Ẹ n lẹ́Èdè Yorùbá
The language of the Yoruba city-states — Ifẹ̀, Ọ̀yọ́, Ìbàdàn — and a root language of Lucumí, Candomblé and Santería vocabulary across the Americas.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Volta–Niger)
- Spoken in
- Nigeria, Benin, Togo
Amharic
ሰላም (Selam)አማርኛ
The working language of Ethiopia, written in the Geʽez script — one of the very few writing systems developed in Africa and still in daily use.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Semitic)
- Spoken in
- Ethiopia
Zulu
SawubonaisiZulu
The most widely spoken home language in South Africa, and one of the Nguni languages that carries click consonants borrowed from long contact with Khoisan speakers.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu, Nguni)
- Spoken in
- South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho
Hausa
SannuHarshen Hausa
The trade language of the Sahel, carried along the trans-Saharan routes by the Hausa city-states of Kano, Katsina and Zaria — and still written in Ajami as well as Latin script.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Chadic)
- Spoken in
- Nigeria, Niger, Ghana
Twi
Ɛte sɛn?Twi (Akan)
A dialect cluster of Akan, the language of the Asante and Akyem states, and the source of adinkra symbolism, the day-name system and words like 'obroni'.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Kwa)
- Spoken in
- Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire
Wolof
Salaam aleekumWolof
The everyday language of Senegal, spoken far beyond the Wolof ethnic group and written both in Latin script and in Wolofal, the Arabic-script tradition of the Sufi brotherhoods.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Atlantic)
- Spoken in
- Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania
Igbo
NdeewoAsụsụ Igbo
The language of south-eastern Nigeria, of the Nri religious tradition, the Aro trading network and the Igbo Landing story carried into the Americas.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Volta–Niger)
- Spoken in
- Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea
Somali
SalaanAf-Soomaali
A Cushitic language with one of the world's great oral poetry traditions — Somali only received an official Latin orthography in 1972, and mass literacy followed within years.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Cushitic)
- Spoken in
- Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti
Lingala
MboteLingála
The language of the Congo River, of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and of soukous and rumba — music carried Lingala across the whole continent.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu)
- Spoken in
- DR Congo, Republic of the Congo, Angola
Tamazight (Amazigh)
Azulⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ / Tamaziɣt
The indigenous language family of North Africa, spoken continuously for at least three thousand years. Tifinagh script descends from ancient Libyco-Berber writing and is official alongside Arabic in Morocco and Algeria.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Berber)
- Spoken in
- Morocco, Algeria, Libya
Oromo
AkkamAfaan Oromoo
The language of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, and a working language of the Ethiopian federal state. Written in the Latin-based Qubee alphabet adopted in 1991.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Cushitic)
- Spoken in
- Ethiopia, Kenya
Shona
MhorochiShona
The most widely spoken language of Zimbabwe, and the language of the builders of Great Zimbabwe. Rich in proverbs (tsumo) that carry law, humour and advice in a single line.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu)
- Spoken in
- Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia
Xhosa
MoloisiXhosa
One of South Africa's official languages, famous for its click consonants borrowed from Khoisan neighbours. The language of Nelson Mandela, Miriam Makeba and the Eastern Cape.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu, Nguni)
- Spoken in
- South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho
Bambara
I ni ceBamanankan
The everyday language of Mali and a direct descendant of the Mande speech of the Mali Empire. Its greetings are a call-and-response chain that can last a full minute.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Mande)
- Spoken in
- Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire
Fula (Fulfulde/Pulaar)
Jam tanFulfulde / Pulaar
The language of the Fulani, spread from Senegal to Sudan by centuries of cattle herding, trade and scholarship. Its greetings are built around the word jam — peace.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Senegambian)
- Spoken in
- Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria
Tigrinya
Selamትግርኛ
A working language of Eritrea and the main language of Ethiopia's Tigray region, descended from ancient Ge'ez and written in the same 2,000-year-old syllabary.
- Family
- Afro-Asiatic (Semitic)
- Spoken in
- Eritrea, Ethiopia
Kinyarwanda
MurahoIkinyarwanda
The national language of Rwanda, spoken by virtually the whole population — one of Africa's rare one-country-one-language cases. Formal speech is full of blessings and proverbs.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu)
- Spoken in
- Rwanda, Uganda, DR Congo
Chichewa (Nyanja)
MoniChichewa / Chinyanja
The national language of Malawi and a major lingua franca in Zambia, where it is usually called Nyanja — 'the language of the lake'.
- Family
- Niger–Congo (Bantu)
- Spoken in
- Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique
Malagasy
Manao ahoanaMalagasy
Africa's only Austronesian language, carried to Madagascar by seafarers from Borneo around 1,500 years ago and then layered with Bantu, Arabic, Swahili and French words.
- Family
- Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian)
- Spoken in
- Madagascar, Comoros, Mayotte
Africa speaks around two thousand languages.
These ten are a beginning, not a ranking. Every course here is built from checked vocabulary rather than machine translation, and the AI coach is told to admit uncertainty instead of inventing words. If you speak one of these languages and see a mistake, contribute a correction.
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