Portuguese used as language of urban communication throughout 90% of Mozambique

Thursday, April 08, 2010

An article here on the status of Portuguese in Mozambique contains a lot of numbers that can be seen in this post from last year, but contains some new ones as well. Here are all the numbers together, with the ones in bold the "new" information (new being defined as that which didn't appear in the article last year; the information itself is probably not brand new).

  • 90% of the urban population in Mozambique uses Portuguese as a language of communication
  • Portuguese is spoken in the home by 9% of the population, and as a mother tongue by 6.5%
  • Total population of Mozambique: 21.8 million
  • In Maputo where 960 000 people live, 412 000 have Portuguese as their mother tongue.
  • Those aged 5 to 9 have the largest amount of Portuguese speakers in the capital (85 603), while those that speak it least are in the 35 to 39 year range (16 000 people).
  • In 1975, Portuguese was adopted as the official language of Mozambique. At the time only 10% of the population had access to school. Today literacy has risen to 52%.
  • Right now six million Mozambicans attend school, where they often have their first contact with the Portuguese language. However, 200 000 children are not able to attend school due to a lack of vacancies, schools or teachers.

So in short, Portuguese is doing very well in Mozambique, and could be doing ever better with improved access to schooling.


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