UCLA Library

In current Sudan, the many languages that are regularly spoken vary widely across the country. Although the national language is Arabic and most people in the main cities speak it, the farther out of the city you stretch out, the more “broken” the Arabic becomes, and the more people are increasingly comfortable with their indigenous tribal languages than with Arabic. These tribal dialects have some of the richest histories- my tribe’s dialect was descended from ancient Nubian languages and has since been slightly mixed with Arabic as a result of Arab conquests- and yet, the number of speakers has sharply fallen after my father’s generation.