Though Afrikaans was closely associated with the white minority’s decades-long domination of the country and segregationist politics, not all Afrikaans speakers are white. While there are about 2.5 million white Afrikaners, the majority of the country’s four million mixed-race people also speak Afrikaans as their first language.

White Afrikaners were the country’s rulers and elite until the first all-race elections held 11 years ago. Now, many complain that they can’t get jobs because of their skin color and are fighting for the right to educate their children in Afrikaans.

Afrikaans is one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, but it is a source of political tension. Some Afrikaners claim it is being replaced by English in schools and universities and on the radio as part of plan to eliminate it. They also say other languages like Zulu and Xhosa are benefiting from government programs that encourage their use. A language born of a combination of Dutch, spoken by the first white settlers, and the Malay spoken by imported slaves, Afrikaans was promoted by the apartheid government as the main language of white officialdom.

An estimated 6700 languages are commonly spoken in the world today (This number increases to over 40,000 when regional dialects are considered). Estimates indicate that almost half of these languages could disappear during the next hundred years. Languages become extinct when the population decreases or the majority of the speakers use another language more often (either due to government / educational pressure or perceived social and economic advantage).

An official language is usually the language of law and goverment, however many countries require that important documents be translated into other languages. About half of the world's countries have at least one official language. The official language is not necessarily the most widely spoken especially when it defines nationalism (eg Ireland) or describes former colonial control (eg Liberia). In others (including Australia, Sweden and the United States) there is no official language but one language is commonly used by custom.

In most countries many local languages are spoken. As these languages are usually linked to ethnic groups, the choice of language in particular situations can be a political issue. In some countries (eg.Iraq - Arabic and Kurdish languages) language issues are serious enough to threaten the unity of the country or involve violent protest. For further information on some of the current language issues see Languages - a note

Hindi is the most widespread language, spoken by about 40 percent of the population, followed by Bengali (8.3 percent), Telugu (7.87 percent) and Marathi (7.45 percent).

There are 12 languages with more than 10 million speakers in the country, and four more with more than a million speakers each. Almost four percent of people in India speak a language other than the 18 named in the census.

According to the Summer Institute for Linguistics Ethnologue Survey conducted in 1999, there are 937,132,000 native speakers of Chinese in the world. The other languages with more than 100 million native speakers are Spanish, English, Bengali/Bangla, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese.

Africa is the most linguistically diverse continent, with over 2,000 languages. The most widely spoken languages in Africa are Arabic (in the north), Swahili and Hausa. Some African languages are spoken by only a few thousand people.