Languages of Niger
Official Languages
Table:
Language

Family

Approx %

Main region

Notes

Hausa

Afro-Asiatic / Chadic

55.4%

South, central

Main trade language[3]

Songhai

Songhay languages

21%

Southwest

Zarma and "Kaado" Songhay are considered together

Tamasheq

Afro-Asiatic / Berber

9.3%

North

Fulfulde

Niger–Congo / Atlantic

8.5%

All

Fulfulde of Western Niger & Central-Eastern Niger are considered together

Kanuri

Nilo-Saharan

4.7%

Southeast

Arabic

Afro-Asiatic / Semitic

0.4%

Southeast

Particularly spoken by the Diffa Arabs mainly in the Diffa Region

Gourmanchéma

Niger–Congo / Gur

0.4%

Southwest corner

Spoken mainly by the Gurma people of southwest Niger

Tebu

Nilo-Saharan

0.4%

East

Spoken mainly by the Toubou people of Eastern Niger

Other

N/A

0.1%

Throughout

Any other languages

By analysing the accompanying table along with the passages listed at the end.

Solve the question: The language spoken by approximately 21 % of people in Niger is spoken particularly in Gao and what city ? Return your answer as JSON: {"answer": "YOUR ANSWER"}. Avoid adding external knowledge.

Hausa ( /ˈhaʊsə/ ; Harshen/Halshen Hausa ) is the Chadic language ( a branch of the Afroasiatic language family ) with the largest number of speakers , spoken as a first language by some 44 million people , and as a second language by another 20 million . The total number of Hausa speakers is estimated at 63 million , according to Ethnologue . The ancestral language of the Hausa people , one of the largest ethnic groups in Central Africa , Hausa is mostly spoken throughout southern Niger and northern Nigeria . It has developed into a lingua franca across much of Western Africa for purposes of trade . A small group in the US speak Hausa ( mostly from Ghana ) .
Afroasiatic ( Afro-Asiatic ) , also known as Afrasian and in older sources as Hamito-Semitic ( Chamito-Semitic ) or Semito-Hamitic , is a large language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in West Asia , North Africa , the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel . Afroasiatic languages have over 495 million native speakers , the fourth largest number of any language family ( after Indo-European , Sino-Tibetan and Niger-Congo ) . The phylum has six branches : Berber , Chadic , Cushitic , Egyptian , Omotic and Semitic . By far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum is Arabic . A de facto group of distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch , the languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million native speakers , concentrated primarily in West Asia and North Africa . In addition to languages spoken today , Afroasiatic includes several important ancient languages , such as Ancient Egyptian , which forms a distinct branch of the family , and Akkadian , Biblical Hebrew and Old Aramaic , all of which are from the Semitic branch . The original homeland of the Afroasiatic family , and when the parent language ( i.e . Proto-Afroasiatic ) was spoken , are yet to be agreed upon by historical linguists . Proposed locations include North Africa , the Horn of Africa , the Eastern Sahara and the Levant .
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family . They are spoken in parts of the Sahel . They include 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria , southern Niger , southern Chad , Central African Republic and northern Cameroon . The most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa , a lingua franca of much of inland Eastern West Africa .
The Songhay or Songhai languages ( [ soŋaj ] or [ soŋoj ] ) 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 ( east of Timbuktu ) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education . Some Songhay languages have little to no mutual intelligibility between each other . For example , Koyraboro Senni , spoken in Gao , is unintelligible to speakers of Zarma in Niger , according to Ethnologue . However , Songhay , Zarma , and Dendi have high mutual intelligibility within Niger . For linguists , a major point of interest in the Songhay languages has been the difficulty of determining their genetic affiliation ; they are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan , as defined by Greenberg in 1963 , but this classification remains controversial . Linguist Gerrit Dimmendaal ( 2008 ) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family . Roger Blench argues that the Songhay and Saharan languages form a Songhay-Saharan branch with each other within the wider Nilo-Saharan linguistic phylum . Historically , the name Songhay was neither an ethnic nor a linguistic designation , but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhai Empire . Under the influence of French language usage , speakers in Mali have increasingly been adopting it as an ethnic self-designation ; however , other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves with other ethnic terms , such as Zarma ( Djerma ) or Isawaghen .
Zarma ( also spelled Djerma , Dyabarma , Dyarma , Dyerma , Adzerma , Zabarma , Zarbarma , Zarma , Zarmaci or Zerma ) is one of the Songhay languages . It is the leading indigenous language of the southwestern lobe of the West African nation of Niger , where the Niger River flows and the capital city , Niamey , is located . Zarma is the second-most common language in the country , after Hausa , which is spoken in south-central Niger . With over 2 million speakers , Zarma is easily the most widely spoken Songhay language . In earlier decades , Zarma was known as Djerma , and it is still sometimes called Zerma , especially among French-speakers , but it is usually now called Zarma , the name that its speakers use in their own language .
Kaado is a recently described Songhay language of Niger , located upriver from the socially dominant Zarma language . It has traditionally been considered a dialect of Zarma , the name used for all Songhai spoken in Niger .
Tuareg ( English : /ˈtwɑːrɛɡ/ ) , also known as Tamasheq ( English : /ˈtæməʃɛk/ ) , Tamajaq or Tamahaq ( Tifinagh : ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵌⴰⵆ ) , is a language or family of very closely related Berber languages and dialects . It is spoken by the Tuareg Berbers in large parts of Mali , Niger , Algeria , Libya and Burkina Faso , with a few speakers , the Kinnin , in Chad .
The Berber languages , also known as Berber or the Amazigh languages ( Berber name : Tamaziɣt , Tamazight ; Neo-Tifinagh : ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ , Tuareg Tifinagh : ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ , pronounced [ tæmæˈzɪɣt ] , [ θæmæˈzɪɣθ ] ) , are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family . They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by the Berbers , who are indigenous to North Africa . The languages were traditionally written with the ancient Libyco-Berber script , which now exists in the form of Tifinagh . Berber is spoken by large populations of Morocco , Algeria and Libya , by smaller populations of Tunisia , northern Mali , western and northern Niger , northern Burkina Faso and Mauritania and in the Siwa Oasis of Egypt . Large Berber-speaking migrant communities , today numbering about 4 million , have been living in Western Europe , spanning over three generations , since the 1950s . The number of Berber people is much higher than the number of Berber speakers . Around 90% of the Berber-speaking population speak one of seven major varieties of Berber , each with at least 2 million speakers . They are , in order of number of speakers : Shilha ( Tacelḥiyt ) , Kabyle ( Taqbaylit ) , Central Atlas Tamazight ( Tamaziɣt ) , Riffian ( internal : Tmaziɣt , external : Tarifiyt ) , Shawiya ( Tacawit ) and Tuareg ( Tamaceq/Tamajeq/Tamaheq ) . The now extinct Guanche language spoken on the Canary Islands by the Guanches , as well as possibly the languages of the ancient C-Group culture in today 's southern Egypt and northern Sudan , are believed to have belonged to the Berber branch of the Afroasiatic family . The Berber languages and dialects have had a written tradition , on and off , for about 2,500 years , although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts and invasions . They were first written in the Libyco-Berber abjad , which is still used today by the Tuareg in the form of Tifinagh . The oldest dated inscription is from 3rd century BCE .
Fula /ˈfuːlə/ , also known as Fulani /fʊˈlɑːniː/ or Fulah ( Fula : Fulfulde , Pulaar , Pular ; French : Peul ) , is a Senegambian language spoken as a set of various dialects in a continuum that stretches across some 20 countries in West and Central Africa . Along with other related languages such as Serer and Wolof , it belongs to the Senegambian branch within the Niger-Congo languages , which does not have tones , unlike most other Niger-Congo languages . More broadly , it belongs to the Atlantic geographic grouping within Niger-Congo . It is spoken as a first language by the Fula people ( Fulani , Fula : Fulɓe ) from the Senegambia region and Guinea to Cameroon , Nigeria , and Sudan and by related groups such as the Toucouleur people in the Senegal River Valley . It is also spoken as a second language by various peoples in the region , such as the Kirdi of northern Cameroon and northeastern Nigeria .
The Niger-Congo languages are the world 's third largest language family in terms of number of speakers and Africa 's largest in terms of geographical area , number of speakers and number of distinct languages . It is generally considered to be the world 's largest language family in terms of distinct languages , ahead of Austronesian , although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language ; the number of named Niger-Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540 . It is the third-largest language family in the world by number of native speakers , comprising around 700 million people as of 2015 . Within Niger-Congo , the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people ( 2015 ) , or half the total Niger-Congo speaking population . The most widely spoken Niger-Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba , Igbo , Fula and Zulu . The most widely spoken by total number of speakers is Swahili . While the ultimate genetic unity of the core of Niger-Congo ( called Atlantic-Congo ) is widely accepted , the internal cladistic structure is not well established . Other primary branches may include Dogon , Mande , Ijo , Katla and Rashad . The connection of the Mande languages especially has never been demonstrated , and without them the validity of Niger-Congo family as a whole ( as opposed to Atlantic-Congo or a similar subfamily ) has not been established . One of the most distinctive characteristics common to Atlantic-Congo languages is the use of a noun-class system , which is essentially a gender system with multiple genders .
The Atlantic languages ( or West Atlantic languages [ note 1 ] ) of West Africa are a major subgroup of the Niger-Congo languages . The exact scope of the Atlantic subgroup is the object of current research . The Atlantic languages are spoken along the Atlantic coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone , though transhumant Fula speakers have spread eastward and are found in large numbers across the Sahel , from Senegal to Nigeria , Cameroon and Sudan . Wolof of Senegal and several of the Fula languages are the most populous Atlantic languages , with several million speakers each . Other significant members include Serer and the Jola dialect cluster of Senegal . Temne , a major language of Sierra Leone , was included in the Atlantic subgroup in earlier classifications , but in modern proposals , it is no longer grouped within Atlantic . Most Atlantic languages exhibit consonant mutation and have noun-class systems similar to those of the distantly related Bantu languages . Some languages are tonal , while others such as Wolof have pitch-accent systems . The basic word order tends to be SVO .
Kanuri ( /kəˈnuːri/ ) is a dialect continuum spoken by some four million people , as of 1987 , in Nigeria , Niger , Chad and Cameroon , as well as small minorities in southern Libya and by a diaspora in Sudan .
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 . As indicated by its hyphenated name , Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior , including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert . Eight of its proposed constituent divisions ( excluding Kunama , Kuliak , and Songhay ) are found in the modern two nations of Sudan and South Sudan , through which the Nile River flows . In his book The Languages of Africa ( 1963 ) , Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family . It contains the languages which are not included in the Niger-Congo , Afroasiatic or Khoisan groups . Although some linguists have seen the phylum as Greenberg 's wastebasket , into which he placed all the otherwise unaffiliated non-click languages of Africa , specialists in the field have accepted its reality since Greenberg 's classification . Its supporters accept that it is a challenging proposal to demonstrate but contend that it looks more promising the more work is done . Some of the constituent groups of Nilo-Saharan are estimated to predate the African neolithic . Thus , the unity of Eastern Sudanic is estimated to date to at least the 5th millennium BC . Nilo-Saharan genetic unity would necessarily be much older still and date to the late Upper Paleolithic . This larger classification system is not accepted by all linguists , however .
Arabic ( Arabic : اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , al-ʿarabiyyah , [ al ʕaraˈbijːa ] ( listen ) or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , [ ˈʕarabiː ] ( listen ) or [ ʕaraˈbij ] ) is a Semitic language that first emerged in the 1st to 4th centuries CE . It is now the lingua franca of the Arab world . It is named after the Arabs , a term initially used to describe peoples living in the area bounded by Mesopotamia in the east and the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the west , in Northwestern Arabia and in the Sinai Peninsula . The ISO assigns language codes to thirty varieties of Arabic , including its standard form , Modern Standard Arabic , also referred to as Literary Arabic , which is modernized Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists ; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic , but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ , the purest Arabic ) or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ) . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities and is used to varying degrees in workplaces , government and the media . Arabic , in its standard form , is the official language of 26 states , as well as the liturgical language of the religion of Islam , since the Quran and Hadith were written in Arabic . During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe , especially in science , mathematics and philosophy . As a result , many European languages have also borrowed many words from it . Arabic influence , mainly in vocabulary , is seen in European languages - mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese and Catalan - owing to both the proximity of Christian European and Muslim Arab civilizations and almost 800 years of Arabic culture and language presence in the Iberian Peninsula , referred to in Arabic as al-Andalus . Sicilian has about 500 Arabic words , many of which relate to agriculture and related activities , [ full citation needed ] as a legacy of the Emirate of Sicily from the mid-9th to mid-10th centuries , while Maltese language is a Semitic language developed from a dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages , including Greek and Bulgarian , have also acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish .
The Semitic languages , previously also named Syro-Arabian languages , are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East that are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of Western Asia , North Africa and the Horn of Africa , as well as in often large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America , Europe and Australasia . The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History , who derived the name from Shem , one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis . The most widely spoken Semitic languages today are ( numbers given are for native speakers only ) Arabic ( 300 million ) , Amharic ( ~65 million ) , Tigrinya ( 7 million ) , Hebrew ( ~5 million native/L1 speakers ) , Tigre ( ~1.05 million ) , Aramaic ( 575,000 to 1 million largely Assyrian fluent speakers ) and Maltese ( 483,000 speakers ) . Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date , with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts ( written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform ) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the northern Levant respectively . The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian , Elamite ( 2800 BCE to 550 BCE ) ( both language isolates ) , Egyptian and unclassified Lullubi from the 30th century BCE . Most scripts used to write Semitic languages are abjads - a type of alphabetic script that omits some or all of the vowels , which is feasible for these languages because the consonants in the Semitic languages are the primary carriers of meaning . Among them are the Ugaritic , Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac , Arabic , and South Arabian alphabets . The Ge'ez script , used for writing the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea , is technically an abugida - a modified abjad in which vowels are notated using diacritic marks added to the consonants at all times , in contrast with other Semitic languages which indicate diacritics based on need or for introductory purposes . Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union . The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology . That is , word roots are not themselves syllables or words , but instead are isolated sets of consonants ( usually three , making a so-called triliteral root ) . Words are composed out of roots not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes , but rather by filling in the vowels between the root consonants ( although prefixes and suffixes are often added as well ) .
Diffa Arabs ( Arabic : ديفا عرب ) ( also known as Mahamid Arabs ) is the Nigerien name given to Arab nomadic tribespeople living in eastern Niger , mostly in the Diffa Region . In 2006 , approximately 150,000 and accounting for less than 1.5% of the Niger 's population , the Diffa Arabs are in fact the westernmost dispersion of Arabic speaking Sudanese nomads , primarily drawn from the Mahamid sub clan of Sudan and Chad .
Diffa is one of the seven Regions of Niger , located in the southeast of the country . The capital of the region is Diffa .
Gourmanchéma ( Goulmacema , Gourma , Gourmantche , Gulimancema , Gulmancema , Gurma , Gourmanché ) is the language of the Gurma people . It the largest by number of speakers of the Gurma subgroup of the Oti-Volta languages , which includes among others the Moba language and Konkomba . It is the major language of the easternmost parts of Burkina Faso , around the traditional Gurma capital Fada N'Gourma ; its range extends a little into northern Togo and Benin , and into the neighbouring part of Niger . Like all its close relations and neighbours , Gourmanché is a tone language ; it distinguishes high , mid , and low tones . In the standard orthography the symbols c j represent palatal stops ; they sound somewhat similar to English ch and j respectively . Gourmanché preserves most of the noun-class based grammatical gender system characteristic of the Niger-Congo family , with eight classes and regular agreement of pronouns , adjectives and numerals . As with other Gur languages , the noun classes are marked by suffixes ( not prefixes , as in Bantu ) ; the suffixes come in singular/plural pairs for count nouns , e.g . tibu tree , tiidi trees and are unpaired for mass nouns , e.g . ñima water , soama blood , gulimancema Gourmanché language . Gourmanché has sometimes been said to have noun prefixes as well as suffixes , agreeing in class . However , these prefixes are in fact proclitic particles with an article-like function . They are written as separate words in the standard orthography : bu tibu a/the tree , i tiidi ( the ) trees , mi ñima ( the ) water , and they are omitted , for example , when the noun is preceded by a possessor or followed by kuli each ; thus u nuu , hand , ki biga child , o joa man but e.g o joa muubi o biga nuu the man holds his child 's hand ; o nilo a person but nilo kuli each person .
The Gur languages , also known as Central Gur , belong to the Niger-Congo languages . There are about 70 languages belonging to this group . They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa , namely : in Burkina Faso , southern Mali , northeastern Ivory Coast , the northern halves of Ghana and Togo , northwestern Benin , and southwestern Niger ; with the easternmost Gur language Baatonun , spoken in the extreme northwest of Nigeria .
Tebu is a small family of two Saharan languages , consisting of Daza and Teda . It is spoken by the two groups of Toubou people , the Daza and Teda . Tebu is predominantly spoken in Chad and in southern Libya by around 580,000 people . Daza and Teda have an estimated 537,000 and 42,500 speakers , respectively .
The guide goes on to indicate that every blank should be filled , even if only to indicate that the blank is not applicable , so that those processing the surveys would be able to see that the blank had not merely been overlooked . An Information Circular from the U.S. Department of the Interior , Bureau of Mines , from the same year specified that it used NA to indicate that information was not available and NAp to indicate that a category information was Not applicable . In the early years of computer programming , computerized forms that required fields to be filled in could cause problems where the field was one for which no answer would be applicable to certain persons filling out the form . Before programmers became aware of a problem with a particular field , persons filling out that field might fill it in with a term such as this , which the program processing the form would misinterpret as an intent to provide the requested information . For example , if a form contained a field for a middle name , and the person filling out the form put N/A , the computer might interpret this as N/A being the person 's middle name ; this in turn might result in the person receiving mail from the company that produced the form with N/A where a middle name would normally appear .