Northern Songhay is the smaller of the two branches of the
Songhay languages
The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) 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, ...
. It is a group of heavily
Berber-influenced dialects spoken in scattered oases of the
Sahara
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.
Languages
The nomadic varieties include
Tihishit in central Niger around
Mazababou (with two dialects,
Tagdal and
Tabarog) and
Tadaksahak (or ''Dawsahak'') spoken around
Ménaka northeast of Gao (Heath 1999:xv). The sedentary varieties include
Tasawaq in northern Niger (with two dialects, Ingelsi in
In-Gall and the extinct Emghedeshie of
Agadez
Agadez ( Air Tamajeq: ⴰⴶⴰⴷⴰⵣ, ''Agadaz''), formerly spelled Agadès, is the fifth largest city in Niger, with a population of 110,497 based on the 2012 census. The capital of Agadez Region, it lies in the Sahara desert, and is a ...
) and
Korandje far to the north, 150 km east of the
Algeria
)
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n–
Moroccan border at
Tabelbala.
Classification
The main outside influence on all of these except on Korandje is the
Tamasheq
Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others being Tamaj ...
language cluster. Korandje appears to be influenced more by
Northern and
Western Berber; in turn, the neighboring Northern Berber language
Taznatit shows a few traces of Songhay influence. Since the Berber influence in these languages extends beyond the lexicon into the inflectional morphology, Northern Songhay are sometimes viewed as
mixed language
A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgi ...
s (Alidou & Wolff 2001).
References
* Alidou, Husseina & Ekkehardt Wolff. 2001. "On the Non-Linear Ancestry of Tasawaq (Niger), or: How “Mixed” Can a Language Be?" in ed. Derek Nurse, ''Historical Language Contact in Africa'', Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
*
Heath, Jeffrey. 1999. ''A grammar of Koyraboro (Koroboro) Senni: the Songhay of Gao''. Köln: Köppe. 402 pp
{{Songhay languages
Songhay languages