Sango

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. The primary language of the Sango people (or Basango, Bosango, Sangho, Sangos), it is an official language in the Central African Republic, where it is used as a lingua franca across the country. Although there are no statistics to quantify people who speak it as a first versus second language, almost all 5,500,000 people in the Central African Republic speak it as of 2025.

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 trade language 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.