Sango language

Sango (also spelled Sangho) is a major language spoken in Central Africa, especially the Central African Republic, southern Chad and Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is an official language in the Central African Republic, where it is used as a lingua franca across the country; though there are no statistics to quantify people who speak it as a first language versus a second tongue, almost everyone in CAR, estimated at 5,500,000 in 2025, speaks it (or are infants who will speak it) at some level.

Sango is a language with contested classification, with some linguists considering it a Ngbandi-based creole, while others argue that the changes in Sango structures can be explained without a creolization process. It has many French loanwords, but its structure remains wholly Ngbandi. Sango was used as a lingua franca for trade along the Ubangi River before French colonisation in the late 1800s and has since expanded as an interethnic communication language. In colloquial speech, almost all of the language's vocabulary is Ngbandi based, whereas in more technical speech French loanwords constitute the majority. Sango has three distinct sociolinguistic norms: an urban "radio" variety, a "pastor" variety, and a "functionary" variety spoken by learned people who make the highest use of French loanwords.

Sango is a tonal language with subject-verb-object word order, and its orthography was officially established in 1984. It has limited written material, mainly focused on religious literature. Sango is considered easy to learn, although reaching true fluency takes time, as with any other language. The main difficulties for English speakers are pronunciation and tone management.