What's the common official language of Chad, Mali and Niger?

Chad has two official languages, French and Modern Standard Arabic, and over 120 indigenous languages.

Mali is a multilingual country. The languages spoken there reflect ancient settlement patterns, migrations, and its long history. Ethnologue counts more than 80 languages. Of these, French is the official language and Bambara is the most widely spoken.

Niger has 11 languages, with French being the official language and Hausa the most spoken language. Depending on how they are counted, Niger has between 8 and 20 indigenous languages. The discrepancy comes from the fact that several are closely related, and can be grouped together or considered apart.

African French is the generic name of the varieties of a French language spoken by an estimated 120 million people in Africa spread across 24 francophone countries. This includes those who speak French as a first or second language in 31 francophone African countries.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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24 Comments

Sergey Boev

All those countries used to be French colonies, part of French West Africa. After gaining independence around 1960, they accepted French as official language, because there existed dozens of local tribes languages and no one of them was spoken by all people.

John W Shreve

I had a world globe when I was a kid that was made around 1941-2, and all the colonies were colored by country. France's territories were blue, Uk's pink, Portugal green. And I remember the big splotch of blue right where these countries and others were.