Ngbandi-based creole of the Central African Republic
For other uses, see Sango (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Sangu language.
Sango
Sangho, Sangoic
yângâ tî sängö
Pronunciation
[jáŋɡátísāŋɡō]
Native to
Central African Republic Chad DR Congo
Native speakers
sag: 620,000 (2017)[1] snj: 35,000 (1996)
Language family
Creole
Ngbandi-based creole
Sango
Writing system
Latin script
Official status
Official language in
Central African Republic
Language codes
ISO 639-1
sg
ISO 639-2
sag
ISO 639-3
Either: sag – Sango snj – Riverain Sango
Glottolog
sang1327
Linguasphere
93-ABB-aa
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Sango (also spelled Sangho) is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic and also the co-official language of the country.[2] It is used as a lingua franca across the country and had 450,000 native speakers in 1988. It also has 1.6 million second language speakers.
Sango is a language with contested classification, with some linguists considering it a Ngbandi-based creole, while others argue that the changes in Sango structures can be explained without a creolization process. It has many French loanwords, but its structure remains wholly Ngbandi. Sango was used as a lingua franca for trade along the Ubangi River before French colonisation in the late 1800s and has since expanded as an interethnic communication language. In colloquial speech, almost all of the language's vocabulary is Ngbandi based, whereas in more technical speech French loanwords constitute the majority.
Today, Sango is both a national and official language of the Central African Republic, spoken by 350,000 speakers as of the 1970 census. It is also spoken as a lingua franca in southern Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sango has three distinct sociolinguistic norms: an urban "radio" variety, a "pastor" variety, and a "functionary" variety spoken by learned people who make the highest use of French loanwords.
Sango is a tonal language with subject-verb-object word order, and its orthography was officially established in 1984. It has limited written material, mainly focused on religious literature. Sango is considered easy to learn, although reaching true fluency takes time, as with any other language. The main difficulties for English speakers are pronunciation and tone management, as Sango is a tonal language.
^Sango at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Riverain Sango at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
^Samarin, William J. (2000). "The Status of Sango in Fact and Fiction: On the One-Hundredth Anniversary of its Conception". In McWhorter, John H. (ed.). Language Change and Language Contact in Pidgins and Creoles. Creole language library. Vol. 21. John Benjamins. pp. 301–34. ISBN 9789027252432.
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Global Information
Central African Republic
