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EntityQ35727· pop 19· linked from 85 articles

Fanagalo, or Fanakalo, is a vernacular or pidgin based primarily on Zulu with input from English and a small amount of Afrikaans. It is used as a lingua franca, mainly in the gold, diamond, coal and copper mining industries in South Africa and to a lesser extent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although it is used as a second language only, the number of speakers was estimated as "several hundred thousand" in 1975. By the time independence came–or in the case of South Africa, universal suffrage–English had become sufficiently widely spoken and understood

Key facts

Language.name
Fanagalo
Language.nativename
Pidgin Zulu
Language.region
Southern Africa-All mining regions of South Africa
Language.speakers
L1: none
Language.ref
e25
Language.speakers2
L2 speakers: 5,000 (2022)
Language.speakers_label
Speakers
Language.family
Pidginisation of Zulu
Language.dia1
Chilapalapa
Language.dia2
Zulu
Language.familycolor
Pidgin
Language.iso3
fng
Language.glotto
fana1235
Language.glottorefname
Fanagalo
Language.guthrie
S40A
Language.lingua
99-AUT-fh

via Wikipedia infobox

~17 min read

Encyclopedic overview

14 sections
Contents
  • Etymology
  • Bhrosha
  • Phonology
  • Consonants
  • Vowels and syllabic consonants
  • Grammar
  • Verbs
  • Noun Pluralisation
  • Interrogatives
  • Language features and variants
  • See also
  • References
  • Further reading
  • External links

Fanagalo, or Fanakalo, is a vernacular or pidgin based primarily on Zulu with input from English and a small amount of Afrikaans. It is used as a lingua franca, mainly in the gold, diamond, coal and copper mining industries in South Africa and to a lesser extent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Although it is used as a second language only, the number of speakers was estimated as "several hundred thousand" in 1975. By the time independence came–or in the case of South Africa, universal suffrage–English had become sufficiently widely spoken and understood that it became the lingua franca, enabling different ethnic groups in the same country to communicate with each other, and Fanagalo use declined.

== Etymology == The name "Fanagalo" comes from strung-together Nguni forms meaning "like + of + that" and has the meaning "do it like this", reflecting its use as a language of instruction. Other spellings of the name include and . It is also known as or or , and .

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Fanagalo” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.