Sango (also spelt Sangho) is the primary language spoken in the Central African Republic: it has 5 million second-language speakers, but only 400,000 native speakers, mainly in the towns. It is a vehicular language based on the language of the Sango tribe, belonging to the Ngbandi language cluster (including Ngbandi and Yakoma ), with many French words. Some linguists, following William J. Samarin , classify it as a creole; other linguists, however (eg Marcel Diki-Kidiri , Charles H. Morrill ) reject this classification, saying that changes in Sango structures (both internally and externally) can quite well be explained without a creolization process.

A study by Taber (1964) indicates that some 490 native Sango words account for about 90% of colloquial speech; however, while French loanwords are much more rarely used, they account for the majority of the vocabulary, particularly in the speech of learned people. The situation might be compared to English, where most of the vocabulary - particularly "learned" words - is derived from Latin or French, while the basic vocabulary remains strongly Germanic. However, more recent studies suggest that this result is specific to a particular sociolect - the so-called "functionary" variety. Morrill's work completed in 1997 revealed that there were three sociologically distinct norms emerging in the Sango language: an urban "radio" variety which is top-ranked by 80% of his interviewees, and has a very few French loan words, a so called "pastor" variety, which is scored 60%, and a "functionary" variety, spoken by learned people who make the highest use of French loan words while speaking Sango, and this variety scores 40% of the interviewees.

Being a vehicular language, Sango is considered unusually easy to learn; according to Samarin, "with application a student ought to be able to speak the language in about three months." However, to reach true fluency takes much longer, as with any language.

The official orthography of Sango contains the following consonants: p, b, t, d, k, g, kp, gb, mb, mv, nd, ng, ngb, nz, f, v, s, z, h, l, r, y, w (to which some add implosive 'b.) Sango contains 7 oral vowels - a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ, u - of which five, i, a ɛ ɔ u, can occur nasalized. In the official orthography, E stands for both e and ɛ and O stands for both o and ɔ. Nasal vowels are then written : in, en, an, on, un. Sango has three tones - high, mid, and low. The standard orthography marks mid tone with dieresis (ë), and high tone with circumflex (ê).

The word order is Subject Verb Object, as in English. The pronouns are: mbï "I", mo "you (sg.)", lo "he, she, it", ë "we", âla "you (pl.)", âla "they". Verbs take a prefix a- if not preceded by a pronoun; thus mo eke "you are", but Bêafrîka ayeke "Central Africa is". Particularly useful verbs include eke "be", bara "greet" (> bara o "hi!"), hînga "know". Possessives and appositives are formed with the word tî "of": ködörö tî mbï "my country", yângâ tî sängö "Sango language". Another common preposition is na, covering a variety of locative, dative, and instrumental functions.

Bibliography

• Charles Taber, 1964. French Loanwords in Sango: A Statistical Analysis. (MA thesis, Hartford Seminary Foundation.)
• William Samarin, 1967. Lessons in Sango.
• Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 1977. Le sango s'écrit aussi...
• Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 1978. Grammaire sango, phonologie et syntaxe
• Luc Buquiaux, Jean-Marie Kobozo et Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 1978 Dictionnaire sango-français...
• Charles Henry Morrill, 1997. Language, Culture and Sociology in the Central African Republic, The Emergence and Development of Sango
• Pierre Saulnier, 1994. Lexique orthographique sango
• SIL (Centrafrique), 1995. Kêtê Bakarî tî Sängö : Farânzi, Anglëe na Yângâ tî Zâmani. Petit Dictionaire Sango, Mini Sango Dictionary, Kleines Sango Wörterbuch
• Marcel Diki-Kidiri, 1998. Dictionnaire orthographique du sängö

External links

• Established French loanwords in Sango
• Ethnologue on Sango
• A site in Sango
• Sango lessons in French
• Sango computer terminology