Expensive to get wrongSouth Africa

South Africa: no language reaches half the country

No single language reaches half of South Africa. The widest is English at 31%, then Zulu at 24% and Xhosa at 18%. 11 languages hold official status nationally or in at least one region.

Which language leads on the pack decides how much of the market can read what it is buying.

72 of a possible 90Tier B, systematic first-party observation. Nothing at this tier is allowed past 90, however good it looks.

Verified September 9, 2026Rechecked every 1095 days, next by September 8, 2029.

Structure

Held since January 1, 2020How the market is physically or commercially arranged. The earliest date we are willing to say this held. It may well have been true before that; we do not backdate a record past the evidence we have read. Supported, version 1.

This entry is wrong if

A national census or a nationally representative survey puts the share of South Africa that speaks English outside 26% to 36%.

Written before the record was published, not after. If you can show this, send it to hello@tryorbt.com and the correction goes on the record with the entry.

Evidence

Tier Bofficial-statisticn = 13
Unicode Consortium: Unicode CLDR 48 supplemental data
CLDR territoryInfo lists 13 languages for this market with a population share.
Read 2026-08-10 · CC BY · about this source

History

v1createdAugust 10, 2026
Derived from the label-language family on 2026-08-10.

Append-only. Nothing in this list is edited or removed once written, including the entries that record our own mistakes. Every change to every record is on the corrections page, and the same log is in entries.json under revisions.

Cite this entry

“South Africa: no language reaches half the country”, The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0, entry omr:za:surface:label-language, retrieved September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/za--surface--label-language. Dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22679129

Orbt, "South Africa: no language reaches half the country," Orbt Market Index, entry omr:za:surface:label-language, verified September 9, 2026, https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/za--surface--label-language.

@misc{orbt-za-surface-label-language,
  title        = {South Africa: no language reaches half the country},
  author       = {{Orbt}},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.22679129},
  note         = {The Orbt Market Index 0.1.0 (dataset DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22679129), entry omr:za:surface:label-language. Verified 2026-09-09},
  howpublished = {\url{https://tryorbt.com/markets/entry/za--surface--label-language}},
  license      = {Orbt Index Public Licence. Free to quote and cite; not to redistribute}
}

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Evidence

History

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