Sango (Yângâ tî Sängö)

Sango or Sangho is spoken mainly in the Central African Republic (Ködörö tî Bêafrîka). There are also speakers of Sango in Chad and Congo-Kinshassa. There are about 400,000 native speakers and maybe 5 million second language speakers. Some sources describe Sango as a Ngbandi-based Croele with French influences, while others say that it is made up mainly of Sango grammar and vocabulary, with many French loanwords, which are rarely used.

Sango is used as a lingua franca throughout the Central African Republic, it is the language of instruction in some schools, and there are regular radio and TV broadcasts in Sango.

The current Sango orthography was introduced by the the government of the Central African Republic on 28 January 1984.

Sango alphabet and pronunciation

Sango alphabet and pronunciation

Notes

Sample text in Sango

Adü âzo kûê yamba, ngâ âla lîngbi terê na lêgë tî nëngö-terê na tî ângangü. Ala kûê awara ndarä na börö-li sï âla lîngbi tî dutï na âmbâ tî âla gï na lêngö söngö.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Information about Sango pronunciation compiled by Wolfram Siegel

Links

Information about the Sango language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sango_language
http://sango.free.fr/ (In Sango and French)
http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Sango_root.html
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=sag
http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Sango

Other languages written with the Latin alphabet

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