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Fanagalo

Fanagalo was a pidgin once spoken in Congo - Kinshasa, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

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Fanagalo · 25.4°S 27.1°E

Fanagalo, or Fanakalo, is a vernacular or Creole 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 Fanakalo use declined.

From Wikipedia · Fanagalo · CC BY-SA 4.0

Words in Fanagalo

MeaningWordRomanization
watermanzi
lousentwala
twomabili*
Imina*
youwena*
wethina*
drinkphuza*
seehon*

* in the simplified ASJP transcription

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Glottolog · fana1235 · Wikipedia (English) · Ethnologue · fng