Songhay

Songhay is a group of about 35 closely related languages and dialects spoken along the middle stretches of the Niger River in Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria, with Zarma its most widely spoken member at two to three million speakers. The languages divide into a Southern Songhay branch centered on the Niger River, including Zarma and Koyraboro Senni, and a smaller, heavily Berber-influenced Northern Songhay branch spoken in the Sahara; some Southern and Northern varieties are not mutually intelligible. Songhay's genetic affiliation is unsettled: it is commonly placed within Nilo-Saharan following Joseph Greenberg's 1963 classification, but the linguist Gerrit Dimmendaal considers it best treated as an independent family, while Roger Blench has proposed a narrower Songhay-Saharan grouping instead.