Language
The official language of Libya is Standard Arabic. However, the prevalent spoken language is Libyan Arabic. This language is spoken by about 6 million Libyans, besides other Arabic dialects (partly spoken by immigrant workers, partly by native populations), viz. Egyptian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic, South Levantine Arabic and Hassaniyya Arabic, amounting to a total number of first-language Arabic speakers of about 95% of total population.
SIL Ethnologue indigenous minority languages in Libya:
- Berber languages: ca. 305,000 speakers
- Nafusi: 184,000 (2006)
- Tamahaq: 47,000 (2006)
- Ghadamès: 30,000 (2006)
- Sawknah: 5,600 (2006)
- Awjilah: 3,000 (2000)
- Domari: ca. 33,000 speakers (2006)
- Tedaga: 2,000
Non-Arabic languages spoken by temporary foreign workers include (with more than 10,000 speakers each): Punjabi, Urdu, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Sinhala, Bengal, Tamil, Tagalog, French, Italian, Ukrainian, Serbian, English.
Read more about this topic: Libyan People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”
—Russell Hoban (b. 1925)