Languages

Approximately 70 languages are native to Sudan.

Sudanese Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the country. It is the variety of Arabic spoken throughout northern Sudan. It has much borrowed vocabulary from the indigenous languages (Nuba, Fur, Zagawa, (languages)).

This has resulted in a variety of Arabic that is unique to Sudan, reflecting the way in which the country has been influenced by both African and Arab cultures. Few nomads in Sudan still have similar accents to the ones in Saudi Arabia. Other important languages include Beja (AKA Bedawi) along the Red Sea, with perhaps 2 million speakers; Fur in the west (Darfur), with perhaps a million speakers; and the various Nubian languages, with over 6 million speakers along the Nile in the north. The most linguistically diverse region in the country is the Nuba Hills area in Kordofan, inhabited by speakers of multiple language families, with Darfur and other border regions being second.

Beja is the sole Cushitic language in Sudan. Arabic is Semitic, the Niger–Congo family is represented by many of the Kordofanian languages, and Indo-European by Domari (Gypsy) and English. Historically, Old Nubian, Greek, and Coptic (Egyptian) were the languages of Christian Nubia, and Meroitic the language of the Kingdom of Kush which conquered Egypt.

Sudan also has multiple regional sign languages, which are not mutually intelligible. But 2009 a proposal for a unified Sudanese Sign Language had been worked out, but was not widely known.

Before 2005, only Arabic was the official language.[104] In the 2005 constitution, Sudan's official languages became Arabic and English.

Culture

Further information: Music of Sudan, List of Sudanese writers, and List of Sudanese singers

Sudanese culture melds the behaviors, practices, and beliefs of about 578 ethnic groups, communicating in 145 different languages, in a region microcosmic of Africa, with geographic extremes varying from sandy desert to tropical forest.