The co-founder of Wikipedia says the languages of Yoruba in West Africa and Swahili in East Africa are the most popular among the several African languages being used on the online encyclopedia.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, 45, says Yoruba is the most popular African language for Wikipedia, with 29,000 pages. The Swahili Wikipedia version is second among African languages with 23,000. Other African languages on Wikipedia include Afrikaans, Hausa, and Zulu.

Speaking in Lagos this week, Wales says his website is branching out from English.

"For a long time there was this sort of cultural concern as why do we have to do everything in English. What happens to local culture? Now we [are] going to have both," said Wales.

Wales founded Wikipedia in January 2001. Eleven years later, Wikipedia has become the go-to site for hundreds of millions of internet users seeking information about anything and everything. Its content is generated by thousands of self-appointed editors who write and rewrite the articles in an open, online process.

Wikipedia on has seven active editors working in Yoruba. But Wales hopes that more users for the online encyclopedia will appear in Yoruba as well as other African languages.

“Not everybody speaks English and won't," Wales noted. "So they should have a vibrant life in their own language. And that’s really great because it’s very organic and the internet provides that in a way for very low cost.”

But challenges such as internet connectivity in Africa remain. And Wales notes that getting people to work in languages besides English is not easy. The English version of Wikipedia has nearly four million pages, far more than any other language, though several languages such as French, German, Spanish and Russian have 800,000 pages or more.

More articles than even Swahili? Nice.

ekt_bear: More articles than even Swahili? Nice.

Not surprising at all considering that the Yoruba language is spoken beyond Nigeria in Togo, Benin and even indigenously beyond Africa.

http://www.soas.ac.uk/africa/languages/languages-of-africa-at-soas-yorb.html

Languages of Africa at SOAS: Yorùbá
Yorùbá is a Niger-Congo language related to Igala, Edo, Ishan, and Igbo amongst others. It is one of the principal languages of Nigeria and spoken in a couple of countries in the West African coast. An estimated 20+ million people speak Yorùbá as their first language in south western Nigeria and more in the Republics of Benin and Togo. Yorùbá is also spoken by diaspora communities of traders in Cote d'Ivore, Ghana, Senegal and the Gambia, and it used to be a vibrant language in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Outside West Africa, millions of people have Yorùbá language and culture as part of their heritage; Yorùbá religion being one of the means of survival in Cuba during the obnoxious slave trade. Many who did not have Yorùbá as their heritage bought into Yorùbá identity through religious conversion. Yorùbá language, culture and religion survived since then until now in Brazil and several other New World countries. A mixture of the old and new decendants of the Yorùbá now live in North America, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. [b]Yorùbá is one of the most extensively researched of all sub-Saharan languages and cultures, and has a long tradition of oral verbal production (oral literature) within indigenous cosmopolitan which is receptive of both Islamic and Christian cultures. [/b]Yorùbá is one of the many African languages that one is sure to hear people speak in the buses and the underground trains in several parts of London; a BBC reporter has compared Rye Lane in Peckham, South East London, to a mini-Lagos, where one can hear several people speaking loudly in Yorùbá as they go about their shopping. Like many other African languages, Yorùbá is tonal.

Yeah but you'd imagine that the population of Yoruba speakers outside of Nigeria is a fraction of that within Nigeria.

Isn't the population of Swahili speakers like 200 mil? Or some huge number.

Surprising that a language spoken by probably no more than 50 or 60 million people on earth has more articles.

200 milli? For where? I dont know why people like to pull stuff from thin air like the two posters above.

FYI, at most, five million people speak Swahili

strangerf: 200 milli? For where? I dont know why people like to pull stuff from thin air like the two posters above.

FYI, at most, five million people speak Swahili

I really don't know why you have a penchant for unnecessary rudeness especially when it will eventually be shown that you are wrong anyway. 5 million people speak Swahili as their mother tongue while the language is lingua Franca to many more than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language

Swahili or Kiswahili[3] (known in Swahili itself as Kiswahili) is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands.[4] It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia. Although only five million people speak Swahili as their mother tongue,[5] it is used as a lingua franca in much of East Africa, meaning the total number of speakers exceeds 60 million.[6] Swahili serves as a national, or official language, of five nations: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the Comoros and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Yorubas are conservatively estimated to be around 21% of the entire population of Nigeria. If we take total population to be 160 million, that means the Yoruba language is mother tongue to around approximately 34 million folks in Nigeria. There is then the large number of diasporan Yorubas to consider. The Language and culture is also influential beyond Africa especially in South America. Remember this is about the most popular language. It brings to mind the population of Britain and the number of folks who use English worldwide and follow the culture of the small Island.

Ok, so 60 million+ Swahili speakers, lingua franca of eastern africa, a national language of the DRC.

So like I said, this is somewhat surprising.

Hmm.
Efforts should be made to include other indigenous languages as well.

Gbawe:

I really don't know why you have a penchant for unnecessary rudeness especially when it will eventually be shown that you are wrong anyway. 5 million people speak Swahili as their mother tongue while the language is lingua Franca to many more than that.

It seems you have a very skewed understanding of what "mother tongue" really means, perhaps your understanding is hampered because English language isnt your mother tongue. Below is my working definition of mother tongue and I hope you step away from your trademark pretentiousness and would just take the pain, no matter how psychologically discomforting, to understand/comprehend the real definition of "mother tongue" as explained below:

A first language (also native language, mother tongue, arterial language, or L1) is the language(s) a person has learned from birth[1] or within the critical period, or that a person speaks the best and so is often the basis for sociolinguistic identity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_language

I am using Wikipedia, not because I believe in in it, since it is the easiest and most accessible source for a primitive but highly egocentric, half-witted, semi-illiterate, overhyped dunce like you.

Now, from the above, it is obvious that just because an Ibo man( Father Ibo, mother Ibo )who lives in Lagos speaks passable/fluent Yoruba doesnt make Yoruba his mother tongue. How ever you look at it, this typical Ibo man's native language aka mother tongue is Ibo, not Yoruba, and as such it would be wrong to count such a person as a native speaker of the language. The same way, you wouldn't classify Soyinka as a native speaker of English language. The 5 million you referenced above includes people who speak Kiswahili as second language. The language is most ubiquitous in Tanzania and it serves as a unifying language among the different tribes ( just as how Yoruba language could be seen as a sub-unifying language among the different tribes in Lagos, sort of), who each have their own tribal language. Every where else, it is learnt formally, just as how most ESL speakers learn English in school.

The Yorubas are conservatively estimated to be around 21% of the entire population of Nigeria. If we take total population to be 160 million, that means the Yoruba language is mother tongue to around approximately 34 million folks in Nigeria. There is then the large number of diasporan Yorubas to consider. The Language and culture is also influential beyond Africa especially in South America. Remember this is about the most popular language. It brings to mind the population of Britain and the number of folks who use English worldwide and follow the culture of the small Island.

I dont have the time for the crap you wrote above. Most are factually incorrect. Nigeria does not have a population of 160 million and there isnt a large diasporan Yorubas any where, at least not more than any other group in Nigeria. . . nuff said

Yawn!

strangerf:

It seems you have a very skewed understanding of what "mother tongue" really means, perhaps your understanding is hampered because English language isnt your mother tongue. Below is my working definition of mother tongue and I hope you step away from your trademark pretentiousness and would just take the pain, no matter how psychologically discomforting, to understand/comprehend the real definition of "mother tongue" as explained below:



I am using Wikipedia, not because I believe in in it, since it is the easiest and most accessible source for a primitive but highly egocentric, half-witted, semi-illiterate, overhyped dunce like you.

Now, from the above, it is obvious that just because an Ibo man( Father Ibo, mother Ibo )who lives in Lagos speaks passable/fluent Yoruba doesnt make Yoruba his mother tongue. How ever you look at it, this typical Ibo man's native language aka mother tongue is Ibo, not Yoruba, and as such it would be wrong to count such a person as a native speaker of the language. The same way, you wouldn't classify Soyinka as a native speaker of English language. The 5 million you referenced above includes people who speak Kiswahili as second language. The language is most ubiquitous in Tanzania and it serves as a unifying language among the different tribes ( just as how Yoruba language could be seen as a sub-unifying language among the different tribes in Lagos, sort of), who each have their own tribal language. Every where else, it is learnt formally, just as how most ESL speakers learn English in school.








I dont have the time for the crap you wrote above. Most are factually incorrect. Nigeria does not have a population of 160 million and there isnt a large diasporan Yorubas any where, at least not more than any other group in Nigeria. . . nuff said

My guy, all this nonsense to justify the wrong claim , by an unbelievably big margin, you made below?

FYI, at most, five million people speak Swahili

Stop digging yourself further into the hole your pugnacious ignorance created. Your pedantism and meandering drivel does nothing to hide the fact that far more than 5 million folks speak Swahili. That was always my point. Kindly accept that it is conclusively established here that you do not know what you are talking about. No manner of insult can change that.

StrangerF, your words are words of wisdom.
Happy April wiseman.

Nice one

Much ado about nothing.

ekt_bear = retarded.

strangerf = weirdo.

gbawe = talks loud with no substance.

Andre Uweh: StrangerF, your words are words of wisdom.
Happy April wiseman.

Anyone seeking to rob the Yorubas of glory is automatically your friend. Funny how you don't allow that little thing called fact to get in the way.

Below is the 50 most spoken language in the world. Where is Swahili or your language ? You should get over yourself and your hatred of Yoruba folks to minimally admit some truth about them everyone else accepts. I don't just get why, even for the sake of raising good kids who will appreciate the importance of honesty at all times, some folks can't call a spade a spade sometimes. I bet if they tell you that Yoruba have the highest rates of twin birth in the entire world you would probably dispute that also to side with anyone providing half-baked jargon to argue with that factual statistic.


http://whizsoftwares./2011/03/15/the-50-most-widely-spoken-languages-in-the-world/

The 50 Most Widely Spoken Languages in the world
Filed under: General Knowledge — Comments Off March 15, 2011
Rank, Countries2 Population3
language (in millions)
1. Chinese, Mandarin Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Singapore, S. Africa, Taiwan, Thailand 1120
2. English Australia, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Ireland, Israel, Lesotho, Liberia, Malaysia, Micronesia, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, S. Africa, Suriname, Swaziland, Tonga, U.K., U.S., Vanuatu, Zimbabwe, many Caribbean states, Zambia. 480
3. Spanish Algeria, Andorra, Argentina, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Rep., Ecuador, El Salvador, Eq. Guinea, Guatemala, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Niger, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, Togo, Tunisia, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela. 332
4. Arabic Egypt, Sudan, ALgeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Lybia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, UAE, Oman, Iraq, Lebanon 235
5. Bengali Bangladesh, India, Singapore 189
6. Hindi India, Nepal, Singapore, S. Africa, Uganda 182
7. Russian Belarus, China, Estonia, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, U.S., Uzbekistan 180
8. Portuguese Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, France, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, Macau 170
9. Japanese Japan, Singapore, Taiwan 125
10. German Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Czech Rep., Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Paraguay, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland 98
11. Chinese, Wu China 77.2
12. Javanese Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore 75.5
13. Korean China, Japan, N. Korea, S. Korea, Singapore, Thailand 75
14. French Algeria, Andorra, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, France, Gabon, Guinea, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Laos, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Monaco, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Switzerland, Togo, Tunisia, Vanuatu, Vietnam 72
15. Turkish Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey, Uzbekistan 69
16. Vietnamese China, Vietnam 67.7
17. Telugu India, Singapore 66.4
18. Chinese, Yue(Cantonese) Brunei, China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Malaysia, Panama, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam 66
19. Marathi India 64.8
20. Tamil India, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore, S. Africa, Sri Lanka 63.1
21. Italian Croatia, Eritrea, France, Italy, San Marino, Slovenia, Switzerland 59
22. Urdu Afghanistan, India, Mauritius, Pakistan, S. Africa, Thailand 58
23. Chinese, Min Nan Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand 49
24. Chinese, Jinyu China 45
25. Gujarati India, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore, S. Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe 44
26. Polish Czech Rep., Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, Slovakia 44
27. Ukrainian Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine 41
28. Persian Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Oman, Qatar, Tajikistan, U A Emirates 37.3
29. Chinese, Xiang China 36
30. Malayalam India, Singapore 34
31. Chinese, Hakka Brunei, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Panama, Singapore, Suriname, Taiwan, Thailand 34
32. Kannada India 33.7
33. Oriya India 31
34. Panjabi, Western India, Pakistan 30
35. Sunda Indonesia 27
35. Panjabi, Eastern India, Kenya, Singapore 26
36. Romanian Hungary, Israel, Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine 26
37. Bhojpuri India, Mauritius, Nepal 25
38. Azerbaijani, South Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey 24.4
40. Maithili India, Nepal 24.3
41. Hausa Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo 24.2
43. Burmese Bangladesh, Myanmar 22
44. Serbo-Croatian4 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia 21
45. Chinese, Gan China 20.6
46. Awadhi India, Nepal 20.5
47. Thai Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia 20
48. Dutch Belgium, France, Netherlands, Suriname 20
49. Yoruba Benin, Nigeria 20
50. Sindhi Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Singapore

^^^

You just have to inject tribalism, isnt it?

strangerf: ^^^

You just have to inject tribalism, isnt it?

Balogun oo !!!! strangerf

strangerf: ^^^

You just have to inject tribalism, isnt it?

Shut it. You think I don't know the ugly precedence of Andre Uweh? Besides, who would call you a "wise man" ,other than a Yoruba hater, with the hideously incorrect garbage you have delivered here? Dude, the only person who would support your grossly false utterances would be someone not willing to give Yoruba folks any credit even when factually due. They would rather hail someone claiming the world to be flat as Einstein.

Stranger..No matter how intelligent you try to sound,you still come of as an empty barrel.just give it a rest abeg.

One hallmark of Yoruba tribalists is their tendency to quote any garbage found online to support their tribalistic stance

ACM10: One hallmark of Yoruba tribalists is their tendency to quote any garbage found online to support their tribalistic stance

The minimum you can do is to find something that proves them wrong. You cant call something garbage if you dont have contradicting facts

dayokanu:

The minimum you can do is to find something that proves them wrong. You cant call something garbage if you dont have contradicting facts

Abeg don't mind him. One of the most hideously bigoted Nairalander is accusing others of tribalism. How rich. The fact is that this topic and what it states would only be a problem for those not even willing , minimally, to give yoruba folks credit even when commonsense means it is prudent to do so. Tell them, for example, that Yorubas produce the highest number of twins , per ratio, worldwide and they will argue with that fact to say you are quoting garbage online when they are the ones too blinded by hate to even accept what normal and balanced folks agree are facts supported by evidence. Is the owner of wikipedia a Yoruba man for god sake? How have some become so blinded by hate to the extent they cannot even agree he is commenting from an an evidence based perspective ?

Gbawe:

Abeg don't mind him. One of the most hideously bigoted Nairalander is accusing others of tribalism. How rich. The fact is that this topic and what it states would only be a problem for those not even willing , minimally, to give yoruba folks credit even when commonsense means it is prudent to do so. Tell them, for example, that Yorubas produce the highest number of twins , per ratio, worldwide and they will argue with that fact to say you are quoting garbage online when they are the ones too blinded by hate to even accept what normal and balanced folks agree are facts supported by evidence. Is the owner of wikipedia a Yoruba man for god sake? How have some become so blinded by hate to the extent they cannot even agree he is commenting from an an evidence based perspective ?

Very typical of our air-heads c/u/m progressives. Once you outwit them on a topic, they shift the goal-post to something else, hoping to win some cheap points there. Epic Fail!

strangerf:

Very typical of our air-heads c/u/m progressives. Once you outwit them on a topic, they shift the goal-post to something else, hoping to win some cheap points there. Epic Fail!

How did you "outwit" me? By declaring falsely that "FYI, at most, five million people speak Swahili" while I show conclusively that you are off target by at least 50 million ? Dude, you are the only person exposed here as an "airhead". I think I have proven my case that it is indeed plausible that Yoruba is the most popular African language. What exactly is your convoluted, false and inane argument seeking to prove?

strangerf: ^^^

You just have to inject tribalism, isnt it?

Don't mind him. How on earth can someone say that Yoruba is the most popular African language, yet some people here have accepted it and wants to sale this falsehood to jambites.
Yorubas should stop spreading falsehood here. Thank God not all the Yorubas are corrupt for example StrangerF.
Fact: Yoruba is one of the most popular African Languages.

Andre Uweh:
Don't mind him. How on earth can someone say that Yoruba is the most popular African language, yet some people here have accepted it and wants to sale this falsehood to jambites.
Yorubas should stop spreading falsehood here. Thank God not all the Yorubas are corrupt for example StrangerF.
Fact: Yoruba is one of the most popular African Languages.

Why can't one say Yoruba is the most populous language in Africa ?

Did you read what strangerf wrote ?

Just because he speaks yoruba does not means he is yoruba, I imply that was what strangerf was saying

He did not argue with the most populous or not.

Moreover is Jimmy Wales yoruba now, because you are talking of falsehood ?

alj harem:

Why can't one say Yoruba is the most populous language in Africa ?

Did you read what strangerf wrote ?

Just because he speaks yoruba does not means he is yoruba, I imply that was what strangerf was saying

He did not argue with the most populous or not.

Moreover is Jimmy Wales yoruba now, because you are talking of falsehood ?

Uche, to be frank, Nairaland has changed you a lot but for the worse. Remember when you debuted, you were a pure muslim who believed in the truth but look at what you have turned yourself to.
How on earth can someone push the idea that Yoruba is the most popullar language in Africa. This is falsehood at the highest order. In the past, Uche would have been the first person to detect this fallacy.
CHANGE.

Andre Uweh:
Uche, to be frank, Nairaland has changed you a lot but for the worse. Remember when you debuted, you were a pure muslim who believed in the truth but look at what you have turned yourself to.
How on earth can someone push the idea that Yoruba is the most popullar language in Africa. This is falsehood at the highest order. In the past, Uche would have been the first person to detect this fallacy.
CHANGE.

No one is saying Jimmy Wales is right or wrong. Of course I know the truth that it is not the most popular language. It is crazy but also trying to ridicule them is not something I would accept.

That Jimmy Wales must be high on Ondo sh/!/t. Is he not the one that remarked that broadband speed in Nigeria beats that of New York? I don't take comments from such characters serious.

ACM10: That Jimmy Wales must be high on Ondo sh[b]![\b]t. Is he not the one that remarked that broadband speed in Nigeria beats that of New York? I don't take comments from such characters serious.

which one is Ondo dropping ?

Was his comment meant to be taken serious at the first place ?