World Language Map

Where is Central Kanuri spoken?

Central Kanuri is a Saharan language, spoken in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and 1 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 Central Kanuri is spoken

Central Kanuri is spoken in 5 countries: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and 1 more.

Country
Cameroon
Chad
Niger
Nigeria
Sudan

On the map, Central Kanuri 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 Central Kanuri.

How many people speak Central Kanuri?

Wikidata gives about 9.3 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 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 Central Kanuri sits in the language family tree

Glottolog classifies Central Kanuri as follows, from the largest family down to the language itself.

  1. Saharan
  2. Western Saharan
  3. Kanuri-Kanembu
  4. Kanuric
  5. East Kanuri
  6. Central Kanuri

Related languages

Other languages in the East Kanuri group:

More about Central Kanuri

Codes: ISO 639-3 knc, Glottolog cent2050. Glottolog macroarea: Africa.

Questions about Central Kanuri

Where is Central Kanuri spoken?

Central Kanuri is spoken in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and 1 more. On the map it is shown as an area from Asher and Moseley 2007.

How many people speak Central Kanuri?

Wikidata gives about 9.3 million speakers (Wikidata, with no source given, 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 Central Kanuri in?

Glottolog places Central Kanuri in the Saharan family, in the branch Western Saharan, Kanuri-Kanembu, Kanuric and East Kanuri.

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