Gabonese languages

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A total of 42 languages ​​are spoken in Gabon , but this linguistic diversity is threatened as more and more Gabonese are adopting French .

Supremacy of French

The official language of Gabon is French, while 32% of the population speak Fang as their mother tongue. French is the only permitted language of instruction. Before European colonization, numerous languages ​​were spoken in the country as mother tongue, with larger languages ​​such as Fang, Punu and Teke serving as languages ​​for communication between the ethnic groups. The European colonizers introduced French and until 1915 also German in the north in Wolö-Ntem , which belonged to German Cameroon . After the First World War , all traces of German colonization were removed and only French was allowed as the official language, although the majority of the inhabitants of the colony did not speak this. Only Gabonese who worked in business or government administration spoke French. After the Second World War , France increasingly worked to establish the French language in universal primary education in Gabon, and by the 1960/61 census, 47% of Gabonese had some level of oral French over 14, while 13% had written and spoken French. By the 1990s, the literacy rate in French had grown to over 60%.

Meanwhile, a small proportion, several thousand in number, also have a secondary and higher education and are fluent in French. It is estimated that 80% of the country's population is now able to speak French and a third of the residents of the capital, Libreville, are native speakers of the language. More than 10,000  French people live in Gabon , and France continues to dominate the country's foreign cultural and economic ties.

The national languages

The native languages ​​are all members of the Bantu language group , which has been represented in Gabon for over 2,000 years. A distinction is made between 42 languages. They are generally used in oral communication, but not written, although missionaries from Germany and France as early as the 1840s, and an increasing number of missionaries from the United States, developed Latin-based transcriptions for most languages ​​and translated the Bible into several of them. French colonial policy officially encouraged the learning of French and suppressed the use of the Central African languages. The languages, however, still exist through transmission by family and clan; and people in cities and other areas where multiple peoples come into contact can learn multiple Bantu languages.

The Gabonese government sponsored the study of the Bantu languages, which began in the 1970s.

The three largest languages ​​are Fang , Mbere and Sira (Eschira), each with around 25–32% of the population. The remaining languages ​​have single-digit speaker percentages, and some have only a few thousand to a few hundred speakers.

List of languages ​​in Gabon

Sign in French at the National Museum in the capital Libreville

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Le Gabon .
  2. ^ French La Francophonie dans le monde 2006-2007 published by the Organization internationale de la Francophonie . Nathan , Paris , 2007