The General Household Survey covers six areas and provides a trend forecast across a 17-year period since it was introduced. One of those areas includes languages spoken in and out of South African homes.
Nationally, just over one quarter (25.3%) of individuals spoke isiZulu at home, while 14.8% of individuals spoke isiXhosa, and 12.2% spoke Afrikaans.
English was spoken by 8.1% of individuals at home, making it the sixth most common home language in South Africa.
English is, however, the second most commonly spoken language outside the household (16.6%) after isiZulu (25.1%), and preceding IsiXhosa (12.8%).
It is notable that the use of most languages outside the household declined, with the notable exceptions of isiZulu and Setswana.
Here are some of the other findings around South African languages:
• The Indian/Asian population group was the most monolingual with 92.1% who spoke English at home.
• More than three-quarters (77.4%) of coloured individuals spoke Afrikaans at home while 20.1% used English.
• More than three-fifths (61.2%) of white South Africans spoke Afrikaans and 36.3% spoke English.
• Black Africans spoke a much larger variety of languages. Besides the two most commonly spoken languages, isiZulu (31.1%) and isiXhosa (18.2%), notable sub-groups of black African individuals also spoke Sepedi (12.4%), Setswana (11.1%) and Sesotho (9.7%).
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