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Languages of Chad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Languages of Chad
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Chad has two official languages, Arabic and French, and over 120 indigenous languages. A vernacular version of Arabic, Chadian Arabic, is a lingua franca and the language of commerce, spoken by 40–60% of the population.[1] French is widely spoken in the main cities such as N'Djamena and by most men in the south of the country. Most schooling is in French.[2] The language with the most first-language speakers is probably Ngambay, with around one million speakers.[3]

In April 2005 Chad joined the Arab League as an observer, before submitting an application to join the Arab League as a member state on 25 March 2014, [4] which was still pending in 2025.

Chadian Sign Language is a variant of Nigerian Sign Language, a dialect of American Sign Language; Andrew Foster introduced ASL in the 1960s, and Chadian teachers for the deaf train in Nigeria.

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Niger–Congo languages

Nilo-Saharan languages

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Afro-Asiatic languages

(Ethnologue lists 54 Chadic languages in Chad altogether, many of them small.)

Creole languages

Unclassified languages

  • Laal (749, SIL 2000)

References

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