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Sango

Sango (also spelled: Sangho) is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it had approximately 1,600,000 to 5,000,000 second-language speakers as of the early 1970s, but only about 404,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns. Sango is exceptional in that it is an African- rather than European-based creole. Although French has contributed numerous loanwords, Sango's structure is wholly African. A variety of Sango was used as a vehicular language along the Ubangi River before French colonization in the late 1800s.

Letters are pronounced as their IPA equivalent, except for , pronounced as [1]. Sango has three basic tones (high, mid, and low), with contour tones also occurring, generally in French loanwords. Sango is an isolating language with subject–verb–object word order, as in English. Being a vehicular language, Sango is considered unusually easy to learn.

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African Languages

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