Home languages spoken nationally – 2001

Language	1st Language Speakers	Percentage
Zulu	10 677 305	23.9%
Xhosa	7 907 153	17.7%
Afrikaans	5 983 426	13.4%
Pedi	4 208 980	9.4%
English	3 673 203	8.2%
Tswana	3 677 016	8.2%
Sotho	3 555 186	8%
Tsonga	1 992 207	4.5%
Swati	1 194 430	2.7%
Venda	1 021 757	2.3%
Ndebele	711 821	1.6%

Note: The total is less than the total population (45 million), because other languages such as Tamil, Urdu, German, Italian, Portugese and Greek, are also spoken as first languages by some South Africans.