World Language Map

Where is Sudanese Arabic spoken?

Sudanese Arabic is an Afro-Asiatic language, spoken in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt and 4 more. The outlined area on the map shows where.

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Key

Language families (largest ten)

  • Atlantic-Congo
  • Austronesian
  • Sino-Tibetan
  • Indo-European
  • Afro-Asiatic
  • Nuclear Trans New Guinea
  • Otomanguean
  • Austroasiatic
  • Tai-Kadai
  • Pama-Nyungan

Everything else

  • All other families Smaller families, isolates and unclassified languages.
  • Point A language with no area map. The dot sits at its Glottolog position, in its family colour.

How to read the map. Each colour is a language family: a group of languages that share a common ancestor. The ten largest families have their own colour and every other family is grey. Areas are see-through, so where two languages share a place the colours mix. Tap anywhere to list every language whose area covers that spot. Areas are generalisations drawn from published atlases, many of them decades old, and cities are multilingual, so an area never says that everyone there speaks the language. A dot marks a language that has no area map. The family name is always given in words, because colour alone is hard to tell apart for some people.

Where Sudanese Arabic is spoken

Sudanese Arabic is spoken in 8 countries: Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt and 4 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.

CountryShare of populationEstimated speakers
Sudan61%30,785,053
Central African RepublicNot givenNot given
ChadNot givenNot given
EgyptNot givenNot given
EritreaNot givenNot given
EthiopiaNot givenNot given
LibyaNot givenNot given
South SudanNot givenNot given

Estimated speakers are the CLDR percentage applied to CLDR’s own population figure for the country, so they are rough. A country without a figure may still have speakers: it is listed because the language area, or Glottolog’s record, reaches it.

On the map, Sudanese Arabic is drawn as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007. The area was digitised by the Glottography project (doi:10.5281/zenodo.18613195), and the atlas is cited on the data sources page. Language areas are generalisations, and cities and borderlands are multilingual, so the outline does not mean that everyone inside it speaks Sudanese Arabic.

How many people speak Sudanese Arabic?

Wikidata gives about 31.9 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). These figures are approximate: they come from different sources, years and definitions of a speaker.

Status: Not endangered. Glottolog lists it as not endangered: it is still being passed on to children.

Where Sudanese Arabic sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Sudanese Arabic as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Afro-Asiatic
  2. Semitic
  3. West Semitic
  4. Central Semitic
  5. Arabian
  6. Arabic
  7. Egyptic Arabic
  8. Egypto-Sudanic Arabic
  9. Sudanese-Chadian Arabic
  10. East Sudanic Arabic
  11. Sudanese Arabic

Related languages

Other languages in the East Sudanic Arabic group:

More about Sudanese Arabic

Codes: ISO 639-3 apd, Glottolog suda1236. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Sudanese Arabic

Where is Sudanese Arabic spoken?

Sudanese Arabic is spoken in Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt and 4 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 61% of the population of Sudan, which is about 30,785,053 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Sudanese Arabic?

Wikidata gives about 31.9 million first-language speakers (Ethnologue, 2019). Speaker numbers are approximate and differ between sources: counting who is a speaker, and whether to include second-language speakers, is not settled.

Which language family is Sudanese Arabic in?

Glottolog places Sudanese Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, Arabian, Arabic, Egyptic Arabic, Egypto-Sudanic Arabic, Sudanese-Chadian Arabic and East Sudanic Arabic.

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