Quick—what language do they speak in Chad? You might have said Arabic or French, and indeed, these represent the Saharan nation’s two official languages. But both languages are imported, brought to the land by colonizers or conquerors. Chad consists of more than 120 indigenous languages from three different families: Niger–Congo, Nilo–Saharan, and Afroasiatic. This makes Chad, and the countries around it, quite linguistically diverse, and this diversity is reflected in one of the major languages of the region, Kanuri.
Kanuri is the native language of nearly 10 million people primarily in the lowlands of the Chad Basin. The language is technically classified as a dialect continuum, meaning it’s made up of several closely related languages with high mutual intelligibility, with the languages gradually shifting across a geographical range. Kanuri is characterized by two key dialects, however: Manga Kanuri and Yerwa Kanuri. Given its location in the highly diverse Lake Chad region, Kanuri faces challenges in maintaining its vitality. Once used as a lingua franca, Kanuri has declined in prestige in recent years, and many Kanuri speakers today learn the larger Arabic or Hausa languages. This has resulted in a scarcity of Kanuri translation services.
At TranslationServices.com, we’re all about offering high-quality translation services for Kanuri and other underserved languages. That’s why we’re proudly introducing our Kanuri translation team today—and if you want, you can request a free quote by sending a message!
Let’s discover what the Kanuri language is like.
Modern-day Kanuri is spoken by a variety of different Kanuri ethnic groups as well as the Kanembu people, the descendants of the historical Kanem-Bornu Empire. Kanuri-speaking communities have a presence in six African countries: Nigeria (Borno State and Yobe State), Niger (Diffa Region and Zinder Region), Chad, and Cameroon as the primary countries, with small minority communities in Libya and a Kanuri diaspora in Sudan.
Kanuri belongs to the Nilo–Saharan language family, so it’s completely unrelated to the Afroasiatic Arabic and Hausa languages that dominate the region. It’s a tonal language, like many others in Africa, and it also demonstrates extensive lenition, where consonants change when grammatical markers such as prefixes are appended to a word. The basic word order of Kanuri is subject-object-verb, the most common word order among the world’s languages. Unlike English, Kanuri features postpositions, which are essentially prepositions that come after the noun. Other modifiers, such as adjectives or case markers, also come after the noun, but it’s unusual for a language to have both postpositions and post-nominal modifiers, making Kanuri unique.
Our team is eager to translate all sorts of documents to and from Kanuri for you.
Whereas most translation companies don’t cater to Kanuri at all, we’re proud to work extensively with this major African language. We’ve built our team with the aim of making it as easy as possible for you to get the Kanuri translation services you want, including by offering translation services both to Kanuri and from Kanuri. Of course, since Kanuri is comprised of several closely related dialects, we’ve also ensured that our team is populated with skilled translators from across the Kanuri-speaking world, whether that’s Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Libya, or Sudan.
We’re also proud to offer Kanuri translation services for a wide range of translation domains, from business translation and academic translation to literary translation and localization. Also, since many of our Kanuri translators have additional expertise in other fields, we’re even capable of tackling content filled with esoteric language. So, whether you’re a business leader looking to move into—or branch out of—the Lake Chad region, an academic researcher coming to the Kanuri-speaking world to disseminate surveys, a Kanuri speaker looking to spread appreciation for Kanuri culture by sharing Kanuri tales abroad, or a Kanuri language enthusiast seeking to promote the language by translating entertainment content like books and apps into the language, just turn to our Kanuri translation team.
Our Kanuri translators are standing by, waiting for your message. So get in touch today with the details of your Kanuri translation project!