Editing Sango language (section)

== History ==
[[File:Sango tribe.png|thumb|Sango tribe members, 1906]]
A variety of Sango was used as a [[lingua franca]] along the [[Ubangi River]] before French colonization, in the late 1800s.<ref name="karan12.1">{{Harvcoltxt|Karan|2006|loc=12.1 Sango: language of wider communication and of the churches}}</ref> The French army recruited Central Africans, causing them to increasingly use Sango as a means of interethnic communication.<ref name="karan12.1" /> Throughout the 20th century, missionaries promoted Sango because of its wide usage.<ref name="karan12.1" />

Originally used by river traders, Sango arose as a lingua franca based on the [[Northern Ngbandi language|Northern Ngbandi]] dialect of the Sango tribe, part of the [[Ngbandi languages|Ngbandi language cluster]], with some [[French language|French]] influence.

The rapid growth of the city of [[Bangui]] since the 1960s has had significant implications for the development of Sango, with the creation, for the first time, of a population of first-language speakers. Whereas rural immigrants to the city spoke many different languages and used Sango only as a lingua franca, their children use Sango as their main (and sometimes only) language. That has led to a rapid expansion of the lexicon, including both formal and slang terms. Also, its new position as the everyday language of the capital city has led to Sango gaining greater status and being used increasingly in fields for which it was previously the norm to use French.