The are a language family spoken across northern
Nigeria ,
Niger ,
Chad ,
Central African Republic and
Cameroon , belonging to the
Afro-Asiatic Phylum . The most widely spoken Chadic language is
Hausa , the
Lingua Franca of much of West
Africa . They are divided into four subgroups:
- Lukas, Johannes (1936) 'The linguistic situation in the Lake Chad area in Central Africa.' ''Africa'', 9, 332–349.
- Newman, Paul (1977) 'Chadic classification and reconstructions.' ''Afroasiatic Linguistics'' 5, 1, 1–42.
- Newman, Paul (1978) 'Chado-Hamitic 'adieu': new thoughts on Chadic language classification', in Fronzaroli, Pelio (ed.), ''Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica Camito-Semitica''. Florence: Instituto de Linguistica e di Lingue Orientali, Università di Firenze, 389–397.
- Newman, Paul (1980) ''The Classification of Chadic within Afroasisatic.'' Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden.
- Newman, Paul and Ma, Roxana (1966) 'Comparative Chadic: phonology and lexicon.' ''Journal of African Languages'', 5, 218–251.
- Schuh, Russell (2003) 'Chadic overview', in M. Lionel Bender, Gabor Takacs, and David L. Appleyard (eds.), ''Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Sudies in Memory of Igor M. Diakonoff '', LINCOM Europa, 55–60.
