Northern Songhay is the smaller of the two branches of the

Songhay languages The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centred on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In particular, ...

. It is a group of heavily Berber-influenced dialects spoken in scattered oases of the Sahara.

Languages

The nomadic varieties include Tihishit in central Niger around Mazababou (with two dialects, Tagdal and Tabarog) and

Tadaksahak Tadaksahak (also ''Daoussahak, Dausahaq'' and other spellings, after the Tuareg name for its speakers, ''Dăwsăhak'') is a Songhay language spoken by the pastoralist Idaksahak of the Gao Region of Mali. Its phonology, verb morphology and voc ...

(or ''Dawsahak'') spoken around

Ménaka Ménaka (Berber: ⵎⵏⴾⴰ) is a town and urban commune in Ménaka Cercle and Ménaka Region in eastern Mali. It is the seat and the largest town in the ''cercle'' and region. The town is set amidst the rocky outcrops of the Ader Douchi hills, ...

northeast of Gao (Heath 1999:xv). The sedentary varieties include Tasawaq in northern Niger (with two dialects, Ingelsi in

In-Gall In-Gall (var. In Gall, I-n-Gall, In-Gal, Ingal, Ingall) is a town in the Agadez Region, Tchirozerine Department of northeast Niger, with a year-round population of less than 500. Known for its oasis and salt flats, In-Gall is the gathering poi ...

and the extinct Emghedeshie of

Agadez Agadez ( Air Tamajeq: ⴰⴶⴰⴷⴰⵣ, ''Agadaz''), formerly spelled Agadès, is the fifth largest city in Niger, with a population of 110,497 based on the 2012 census. The capital of Agadez Region, it lies in the Sahara desert, and is also ...

) and

Korandje Korandje (Korandje: ''kwạṛa n dzyəy''; ar, البلبالية, translit=al-Balbaliyyah) is a Northern Songhay language which is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the Algerian oasis of Tabelbala by abou ...

far to the north, 150 km east of the

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

n– Moroccan border at

Tabelbala Tabelbala ( ar, تبلبالة, ber, ⵜⴰⴱⵍⴱⴰⵍⵜ, Tabelbalt, Korandje: ''tsawərbəts'') is a town and commune between Béchar and Tindouf in south-western Algeria, and is the capital, and only significant settlement, of the Daïra ...

Classification

The main outside influence on all of these except on Korandje is the

Tamasheq Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others being Ta ...

language cluster. Korandje appears to be influenced more by Northern and Western Berber; in turn, the neighboring Northern Berber language Taznatit shows a few traces of Songhay influence. Since the Berber influence in these languages extends beyond the lexicon into the inflectional morphology, Northern Songhay are sometimes viewed as

mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgin ...

s (Alidou & Wolff 2001).

References

* Alidou, Husseina & Ekkehardt Wolff. 2001. "On the Non-Linear Ancestry of Tasawaq (Niger), or: How “Mixed” Can a Language Be?" in ed. Derek Nurse, ''Historical Language Contact in Africa'', Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. * Heath, Jeffrey. 1999. ''A grammar of Koyraboro (Koroboro) Senni: the Songhay of Gao''. Köln: Köppe. 402 pp {{Songhay languages Songhay languages