More than a fifth of the population speak isiZulu at home, according to the Census 2011 results

Just over 11.5 million people use isiZulu as their first language, followed by isiXhosa spoken by 8 million South Africans, according to the Census conducted on October 9 last year.

Compared to 2001, the number of people speaking the two languages showed a slight downward trend.

Afrikaans remains the third most popular language in SA households.

Over 13.5% of the national population speak Afrikaans, just slightly up from the 2001 figure of 13.3%.

Afrikaans first language speakers in the Northern Cape have, however, dropped significantly from 68% in 2001 to 53.8 percent last year.

In the Western Cape, the number of people speaking Afrikaans as their home language also decreased from 55.3% (2001) to 49.7 percent in 2011. “Just under half of the population of the Western Cape speak Afrikaans as their first language and almost a quarter speak IsiXhosa,” the document says.

The number of South Africans who speak English as a first language increased by more than a million, from 3.7 million to approximately 4.9 million.