Sango (Yângâ tî Sängö)

Sango or Sangho is spoken mainly in the Central African Republic
(Ködörö tî Bêafrîka). There are
also speakers of Sango in Chad and Congo-Kinshassa.
There are about 400,000 native speakers and maybe 5 million second language
speakers. Some sources describe Sango as a Ngbandi-based Croele with French
influences, while others say that it is made up mainly of Sango grammar
and vocabulary, with many French loanwords, which are rarely used.

Sango is used as a lingua franca throughout the Central African
Republic, it is the language of instruction in some schools, and there
are regular radio and TV broadcasts in Sango.

The current Sango orthography was introduced by the the government of
the Central African Republic on 28 January 1984.

Sango alphabet and pronunciation

Notes

The letters c (sée), q (kâfa) and x (kîsi) are only
used in foreign names
Sango is a tonal language with three tones: a high tone, which is indicated
with a circumflex accent (â, ê, etc), a middle tone, which is indicated
with an umlaut (ä, ë, etc), and a low tone, that isn’t marked.

Sample text in Sango

Adü âzo kûê yamba, ngâ âla lîngbi
terê na lêgë tî nëngö-terê na tî
ângangü. Ala kûê awara ndarä na börö-li
sï âla lîngbi tî dutï na âmbâ tî
âla gï na lêngö söngö.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They
are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another
in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Information about Sango pronunciation compiled by Wolfram Siegel