Languages, The World Cup and Fifa

Just in case anyone could have failed to notice, the World Cup has finally kicked off in South Africa, a nation that can make a fair claim to be truly multilingual. The country has eleven official languages: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu. Interestingly, the most common language spoken at home by South Africans is Zulu (24 percent), followed by Xhosa (18 percent), and Afrikaans (13 percent) with English as only the sixth-most common home language in the country. Football as a world sport embracing many languages--rather than just English--can also be seen in the makeup of FIFA, soccer's governing body, in its use of seven official languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese. Also, FIFA is a French acronym, which may come as a surprise to many; it stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association and was founded in Paris in 1904. It is fitting that South Africa is the first African country to host the World Cup as it was the first country outside Europe to join FIFA in 1908.