209 km away
Spoken across Chad and adjoining parts of Sudan, north-eastern Nigeria, and northern Cameroon. The main Sahelian Arabic variety, used as a lingua franca well beyond Arab communities.
Kanuri
A Saharan Nilo-Saharan language and the historical court language of the Kanem-Bornu empire. Around 13 million speakers across north-eastern Nigeria, southern Niger, eastern Chad, and northern Cameroon.
Shareable facts
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Frequently asked questions
What language is Kanuri?
Kanuri is a dialect of the Kanuri language.
Where is Kanuri spoken?
Kanuri is primarily spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon.
Which region is Kanuri associated with?
Kanuri is part of the West & Central Africa region on DialectAtlas.
How many people speak Kanuri?
Kanuri is spoken by approximately 13,000,000 people.
Is Kanuri endangered?
Kanuri is not currently classified as endangered. It has a stable speaker community with active intergenerational transmission.
Nearby dialects
See on the atlas →505 km away
The Kano-based standard of Hausa. A major lingua franca across the West African Sahel, used widely in Nigeria, Niger, and beyond.
525 km away
A cluster of closely related Central Sudanic (Nilo-Saharan) varieties across southern Chad and adjoining parts of the Central African Republic. The Sara group is the largest indigenous ethnolinguistic complex of Chad; Ngambay alone counts around 1.5 million speakers, with Sar, Mbay, and other varieties extending the dialect chain.
871 km away
The Hausa of Sokoto in north-western Nigeria. Carries the historical prestige of the Sokoto Caliphate and a distinct lexicon of religious and political terms.
930 km away
The Saharan Nilo-Saharan cluster of the central Sahara: Teda in the Tibesti and southern Libya, Daza further south in Borkou and Kanem. Sister branch to Kanuri within Saharan; commonly treated as a single Toubou cluster of two closely related varieties, with around half a million speakers across northern Chad, north-eastern Niger, and south-eastern Libya.
942 km away
A Volta-Niger language of south-eastern Nigeria. One of the three major languages of Nigeria, with a literary standard codified in the late 20th century from a heavily dialect-fragmented base.