Talk:Languages of Angola

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The claim that 2/3 of the population uses Portuguese as the home language needs a source. Unless what is meant is that a large proportion of the population uses some Portuguese at home, this seems very unusual. Someone passed on a short article claiming that 1/3 used Portuguese at home and that even seemed high enough that I was going to check with experts. Now I guess I'll have to do it sooner rather than eventually... --A12n 23:08, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

A quick check comes up with a source saying that 95% of Angolans speak one of the Bantu languages, with some % speaking Khoisan "click" languages and presumably some Portuguese (presumably all 1st language figures): Country Studies: Angola: Ethnic Groups and languages . It may be out of date, but even despite the upheaval of the civil war it is hard to imagine such a huge shift in language demographics. --A12n 23:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

60% of Portuguese native speakers in the 1983 census. [1]. But that maybe misleading because of prestige and war (many left), but it's the official number until a new census is done. But 95% speaking Bantu is very unlikely, neither before nor after the war. Maybe you end up with an ethnical figure. Some authors stated that because of the war the number of Portuguese speakers dropped to 40% (people left for neighbouring Namibia, former Zaire, S. Africa and Zimbabwe), but it is on the rise again (people returning), a source for that I didn't searched now, read sometime ago, but that's on instituto Camões website (also in Portuguese) . Remember that a significant part of the population live around Luanda and other cities.--Pedro 09:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll try to follow up with some other sources. Just coming back to the topic of Angola now. In the text it now says: "Of the 60% Portuguese native speakers, half could only speak Portuguese..." The way this is worded sounds like a contradiction - if someone is a native speaker of x they usually speak x. The issue of how to define a "native speaker" is another question. I appreciate your efforts on this.--A12n 02:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

• Well, I'm not an English speaker, but Angola is a multilinguistic country, Portuguese speakers often speak Bantu languages and vice-versa. It means that 50% of the native speakers could also speak a Bantu language as a second language. Native and second language as defined by the interviewers, I believe. Recently many Portuguese as second language courses closed and changed to Portuguese as a native language courses, because these were inadequate to this country. But that was news, so I cant find a source without too much work. Although there is on newspaper internet archives. Portuguese in Angola and São Tomé is a very different case compared to Portuguese in Cape Verde or Mozambique, for a number of historical factors. Remember that Angola was Portuguese since the 16th century, not from the 19th century onwards like many European colonies in Africa.As for other sources, wikipedia has the NPOV policy, so... I have any problem with that, except when it seems too far-fetched.--Pedro 19:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Is the claim here that 30% of Angolans are monolingual Portuguese-speakers? This seems incredibly unlikely to me. A couple of points - a 1983 census, even if it is the most recent one, is not the be all and end all. That most Angolans are fluent in Portuguese seems likely, but that it is their first language seems dubious to me, if it can't be supported by any sources other than a purported summary of the 1983 census on a questionable website. john k 17:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)