The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.
The Songhay or Songhai languages are a group of closely related languages/dialects centred on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In particular, they are spoken in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the era of the Songhai Empire. In Mali, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education.
Daza is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Daza people inhabiting northern Chad. The Daza are also known as the Gouran (Gorane) in Chad. Dazaga is spoken by around 380,000 people, primarily in the Djurab Desert region and the Borkou region, locally called Haya or Faya-Largeau northern-central Chad, the capital of the Dazaga people. Dazaga is spoken in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad, in the eastern Niger near N'guigmi and to the north. It is also spoken to a smaller extent in Libya and in Sudan, where there is a community of 3,000 speakers in the city of Omdurman. There's also a small diaspora community working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The Saharan languages are a small family of languages spoken across parts of the eastern Sahara, extending from northwestern Darfur to southern Libya, north and central Chad, eastern Niger and northeastern Nigeria. Noted Saharan languages include Kanuri, Daza, Teda, and Zaghawa. They are a part of the proposed Nilo-Saharan family.
The Western Nilotic languages are one of the three primary branches of the Nilotic languages, along with the Eastern Nilotic languages and Southern Nilotic languages; Themselves belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan. The about 22 Western Nilotic languages are spoken in an area ranging from southwestern Ethiopia and South Sudan via northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and northern Uganda to southwestern Kenya.
The Daju languages are spoken in isolated pockets by the Daju people across a wide area of Sudan and Chad. In Sudan, they are spoken in parts of the regions of Kordofan, Darfur, in Chad they are spoken in Wadai. The Daju languages belong to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.
In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania.
Kenya is a multilingual country. The Bantu Swahili language and English, the latter being inherited from colonial rule, are widely spoken as lingua franca. They serve as the two official working languages. Including second-language speakers, there are more speakers of Swahili than English in Kenya.
The Kunama are a Nilotic ethnic inhabiting Eritrea and Ethiopia. Although they are one of the smallest populations in Eritrea, constituting only 2% of the population, 80% of Kunama live in the country. Most of the estimated 100,000 Kunama live in the remote and isolated area between the Gash and Setit rivers near the border with Ethiopia. The Ethiopian-Eritrean War (1998–2000) forced some 4,000 Kunama to flee their homes to Ethiopia. As refugees they reside in the tense area just over the border with Eritrea and in proximity to the contested border village of Badme. In the 2007 Ethiopian census, however, the number of Kunama in Tigray has dropped to 2,976 as the remaining 2,000 or so members of this ethnic group have migrated into the other Regions of Ethiopia.
The languages of Ethiopia refers to the various spoken forms of communication in Ethiopia. It includes the nation's official languages, its national and regional languages, as well as its minority and foreign languages.
The main languages spoken in Eritrea are Tigrinya, Tigre and Modern Standard Arabic. Linguistic demography is uncertain due to a lack of reliable official statistics. SIL Ethnologue estimates that as of 2010, there are 3,360,000 speakers of Tigrinya and 1,390,000 speakers of Tigre. The remaining residents primarily speak other languages from the Afroasiatic family, with a minority speaking Nilo-Saharan or Indo-European languages.
The Nara are a Eastern Sudanic ethnic group inhabiting Eritrea. The society is divided into four subtribes, who traditionally were animist but now follow Islam. They are mostly subsistence farmers. The Nara speak the Nara language, which belongs to the Nilo-Saharan family.
The Nara (Nera) or Barea (Barya) language is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in an area just to the north of Barentu in the Gash-Barka Region of western Eritrea. The language is often confused with Kunama, which is at best only distantly related. According to Tsige Hailemichael, the "...Nara language is in danger of quickly disappearing."
Marvin Lionel Bender was an American author and linguist.
The South Omotic, Somotic, or Aroid languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic family and are spoken in Ethiopia. There are four languages:
Gumuz is a small language family spoken along the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. It has been tentatively classified within the Nilo-Saharan family, perhaps closest to the Koman languages.
The Komuz languages are a proposed branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family which would include the Koman languages, the Gumuz languages and the Shabo language, all spoken in eastern South Sudan and Sudan and western Ethiopia. Nilo-Saharan specialists have vacillated on a genealogical relationship between the Koman and Gumuz languages, a relationship called Komuz. Greenberg (1963) had included Gumuz in the Koman language family. Bender classified them together in a distant relationship he called Komuz, but by 1996 he had reversed himself, though he kept both groups in core Nilo-Saharan. Dimmendaal (2008) kept them together, though expressed doubts over whether they belonged in Nilo-Saharan, later referring to Gumuz as an isolate (2011). Ahland, on the basis of new Gumuz data, resurrected the hypothesis. Blench (2010) independently came to the same conclusion and suggested that the Shabo language might be a third, outlying branch. The classification of Shabo is difficult because of a strong Koman influence on the language that is independent of any genealogical relationship between them. Schnoebelen (2009), moreover, sees Shabo as a likely isolate.
The Mangbetu–Asoa or Mangbetu languages of the Central Sudanic language family are a cluster of closely related languages spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Nuba Mountains, located in the West Kordofan and South Kordofan states in the south of Sudan, are inhabited by a diverse set of populations speaking various languages not closely related to one another.
