Popularity ranking · South Africa

The 100 most popular Languages in South Africa

This curated ranking covers the 100 largest languages in South Africa, ordered by estimated audience size from Rascasse's anonymized search-behavior signals. Out of 211 languages tracked in South Africa, the 100 ranked here account for the largest measured audience reach. Zulu language, Xhosa language and Northern Sotho language lead the list with a combined estimated audience of 9M people. Across all 100 entries the average audience size is 286k, and the largest, Zulu language, reaches around 3.1M people in South Africa. Audience size is the estimated number of unique people in South Africa who actively engage with each language, derived from search demand signals. Rankings reflect search-behavior signals collected across South Africa and are refreshed weekly.

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How to read this list

Rank

Position in the Top 100, sorted by audience size from largest to smallest. Updated weekly.

Audience size

Estimated number of unique people in South Africa who actively engage with this audience, derived from anonymized search-behavior signals.

Country share

Share of the global audience that is active in South Africa. A higher value means the audience is more locally concentrated here.

Avg age

Average age in years across the people who engage with this audience in South Africa, derived from anonymized search-behavior signals. A dash means demographic data is not yet available.

Female share

Share of women among the people who engage with this audience in South Africa. 50% is gender-balanced; values above mean female-skewed, below mean male-skewed.

Ranking

Rank Audience Audience size Avg age Female share Subtype
51 Mauritian Creole 62k 41.7 67.7% Language
52 Vietnamese language 59k 40.5 53.8% Language
53 Uyghur language 53k 36.7 31.0% Language
54 Māori language 50k 37.5 49.8% Language
55 Somali language 43k 35.5 40.2% Language
56 Galician language 42k 37.9 60.0% Language
57 Javanese language 41k 44.3 54.2% Language
58 Albanian language 39k 40.9 71.8% Language
59 Kurdish languages 39k 35.3 50.2% Language
60 Biblical Hebrew 38k 41.6 62.4% Language
61 Catalan language 37k 37.9 58.5% Language
62 Polish language 36k 32.7 55.1% Language
63 Tigrinya language 35k 38.4 31.5% Language
64 Hausa language 34k 38.3 45.1% Language
65 Canadian English 31k 37.3 48.3% Language
66 Egyptian language 30k 39.1 39.1% Language
67 Filipino language 29k 40.1 40.9% Language
68 Kalanga language 25k 34.3 52.1% Language
69 Serbian language 24k 41.3 43.2% Language
70 Romance languages 24k 38.8 52.5% Language
71 Scots language 24k 44.0 48.7% Language
72 Sign language 23k 37.4 59.2% Language
73 Nepali language 22k 32.4 31.1% Language
74 Oromo language 20k 28.7 13.2% Language
75 Chewa language 19k 38.8 35.3% Language

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Frequently asked questions

How is this list of the most popular languages compiled?

Rascasse aggregates anonymized search-behavior signals across South Africa and ranks each language by its estimated audience size. Only entries with at least 5 measured entities are listed.

How often is the list updated?

The ranking is refreshed weekly from the latest search-behavior data and re-published as a static page.

What is the largest language in South Africa?

Zulu language currently leads with an estimated audience of 3.1M people in South Africa.

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