Where Algerian Arabic is spoken
Algerian Arabic is spoken in 5 countries: Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco and 1 more. The table gives the share of each country’s people who speak it, from Unicode CLDR, where CLDR has a figure.
| Country | Share of population | Estimated speakers |
|---|---|---|
| Algeria | 83% | 39,028,675 |
| Mali | Not given | Not given |
| Mauritania | Not given | Not given |
| Morocco | Not given | Not given |
| Tunisia | Not given | Not 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, Algerian 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 Algerian Arabic.
How many people speak Algerian Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 42.3 million first-language speakers (ons.dz, 2024). 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 Algerian Arabic sits in the language family tree
Glottolog classifies Algerian Arabic as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.
- Afro-Asiatic
- Semitic
- West Semitic
- Central Semitic
- Arabian
- Arabic
- North African Arabic
- Western Middle Arabic
- Maghrebi
- Algerian Arabic
Related languages
Other languages in the Maghrebi group:
- Moroccan Arabic (27.5 million speakers)
- Algerian Saharan Arabic
- Judeo-Moroccan Arabic
More about Algerian Arabic
- Read about Algerian Arabic on Wikipedia
- Afro-Asiatic languages map
- Languages spoken in Algeria
- All languages, A to Z
Codes: ISO 639-3 arq, Glottolog alge1239. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.
Questions about Algerian Arabic
Where is Algerian Arabic spoken?
Algerian Arabic is spoken in Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco and 1 more. Unicode CLDR puts it at 83% of the population of Algeria, which is about 39,028,675 people. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.
How many people speak Algerian Arabic?
Wikidata gives about 42.3 million first-language speakers (ons.dz, 2024). 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 Algerian Arabic in?
Glottolog places Algerian Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic family, in the branch Semitic, West Semitic, Central Semitic, Arabian, Arabic, North African Arabic, Western Middle Arabic and Maghrebi.