For anyone looking to do business in Africa, below are some essential facts to be aware of.

• Africa is a continent, not a country.
• There are 56 countries (recognized and de facto states) in Africa.
• Six of the ten fasted-growing countries in the world are in Africa.
• There are an estimated 2000+ African languages.
• There are four primary language families in Africa (some classify up to 7 families).

The Approximate Number of Languages and Speakers

• Afro-Asiatic: 200 languages covering Northern Africa.
• Nilo-Saharan: 140 languages with 11 million speakers throughout Central and Eastern Africa.
• Niger-Saharan: 1000 languages with some 200 million speakers.
• Khoisan: 30 languages in the western part of Southern Africa.

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The Arabic language is the 4th most widely spoken language in the world. There are 280 million Arabic-speaking people spanning 22 countries around the world with combined economies equaling over one trillion USD annually. Arabic is one of the Semitic languages and is widely used in Arabic countries as a first language. Most Arabic-speaking countries are located in the Middle East, North Africa and the Arabic Gulf area. A total of 22 countries use Arabic as their official language and Arabic is also the liturgical language of Islam.

When considering the Arabic language, one must be aware of the very important distinction made between its written form and its numerous spoken forms. There are three different Arabic dialects or forms: Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic and local dialects (Amya or Darja).

The main groups of local Arabic dialects are:

• Maghreb Arabic
• Egyptian Arabic
• Sudanese Arabic
• Levantine Arabic (Shami)
• Iraqi Arabic
• Gulf Arabic
• Najdi Arabic
• Yemeni Arabic

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What languages do they speak in the UAE? What is the difference between Simplified and Traditional Chinese?

Of the roughly 176 million Portuguese speakers in the world, 165 million reside in Brazil. Although Standard Portuguese (based mainly on the dialects spoken between Lisbon and Coimbra in Portugal) and the Brazilian Portuguese dialect (Brasiliero) are mutually intelligible, they are still quite different in several respects.

The differences between Standard Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese include the pronunciations of words, a Brazilian vocabulary that has been greatly expanded through loan words from other languages such as Italian, Spanish, German and Japanese, and the meanings of words themselves.

Brazilian Portuguese can also be different from Standard Portuguese in its syntax. For example, Brazilian Portuguese places object pronouns before the verb; Standard Portuguese, on the other hand, places the object pronoun after the verb.

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Catalan is a Romance Language spoken by roughly 6.5 million people spread over Spain, France and the principality of Andorra. The majority of Catalan speakers are Spanish citizens living in the eastern and northeastern part of the country in the autonomous communities of Catalonia and Valencia, as well as in the Balearic Islands of Majorca, Minorca, and Ibiza. In France, a small population of Catalan speakers can be found in the southern Roussillon region. Spoken Catalan is divided into two main dialect groups: Occidental, subdivided into West Catalan and Valencian; and Oriental, subdivided into East Catalan, Balearic, and Roussillonnais. However, these dialects do not differ enough to keep their different speakers from understanding one another. The Catalan writing system has been developed in a way to make it neutral to both main dialects.

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Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language, is spoken by over a billion people making it the most widely spoken language in the world. Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese dialect, followed by Wu (Shanghainese), Yue (Cantonese), Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and other dialects.

Chinese is written using characters called ideographs. There are approximately 50,000 characters found in the standard Chinese dictionary. The majority of Chinese characters consist of two elements: a signific, which indicates the meaning of the word, and a phonetic, which indicates the sound.

With around 1.2 billion people speaking one or more varieties of Chinese, Mandarin is by far the most widely spoken language in the world. The vast majority of Mandarin speakers are found in mainland China and Taiwan, where it is the official language, as well as Singapore, where it is a co-official language.

Mandarin is also spoken by groups in Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mongolia, Philippines, Russia, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.

The Chinese language is really a collection of numerous Chinese languages or dialects that are different enough from one another to be mutually unintelligible.

The main dialectical groups of Chinese are divided in this way:

• Mandarin (Northern, Central, and Western China)
• Wu, Northern and Southern Min, Kan, Hakka, and Hsiang
• Cantonese

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Czech is spoken by roughly 12 million people in the Czech Republic, where it is the official language. Czech is a relative of Polish, Slovak and the Sorbian languages (found in the eastern parts of Germany). Czech was not standardized as a language until the 15th and 16th Centuries when Jan Hus established its unique orthography and the Bible was first translated into Czech in 1593. There are several Czech dialects, the main three being those of Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia; however, the dialect spoken in the capital city of Prague is the foundation for the standard written form of the language.

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Danish is spoken by approximately six million people worldwide, the vast majority of whom live in Denmark, where it is the official language. Danish is also an official language in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

Danish is closely related to Swedish and Norwegian and its written form is almost identical to Norwegian. However, all three languages are very different in the way they pronounce common words. The close similarities have led some linguists to label them dialects of one single Scandinavian language.

Since the Middle Ages, Danish has been subsequently influenced by Low German dialects, French and most recently English. Danish also has four main dialect groups:

• Sjællandsk (Central-Eastern Danish)
• Jysk (Western Danish)
• Bornholmsk (Eastern Danish)
• Fynsk (Central Danish)

The standard form of Danish taught in school is called Rigsdansk.

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Dutch is spoken by approximately 20 million people worldwide, the majority of whom live in The Netherlands, where it is the national language. However, over 45 million Dutch speakers can also be found in neighboring Belgium, where it is an official language, along with French. Other countries with Dutch-speaking populations include France, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles.

Dutch is part of the Netherlandic-Germanic subgroup within the West Germanic language family. It grew out of a Low German dialect called Lower Franconian in Germany. Modern Dutch began to appear with the translation of the Bible in the 17^th Century.

Spoken Dutch presents a great deal of variety in terms of its dialectal forms. This variation starts with Standard Dutch, the official language for government and schools, and extends down to the numerous local dialects found in the regions and small towns of The Netherlands and Belgium.

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Finnish is spoken by approximately six million people worldwide, the vast majority of whom live in Finland, where it is the official language along with Swedish. A significant number of Finnish speakers also live in Sweden, North America and the Karelian region of Russia.

The modern Finnish language first began to appear during the 16^th Century in the writings and translation of the Lutheran Bishop Mikael Agricolo. Finnish did not start down the road to gaining official status, however, until the 19^th Century when Finland was released from its six-century long rule by Sweden. Finnish finally reached an equal footing with Swedish in the early 20^th Century with the Finnish Constitution of 1919.

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