The Diffusion of Nigeria's languages and language familys.
Language Familys:
Niger Congo: The Niger-Congo language family was originally dominant in the Central, East, and Southern areas of Nigeria. Due to migration by foot, and modern forms of transpertation as well, many Niger-Congo speakers have spread to the western and northern parts of Nigeria, as well as other parts of africa. Many words such as "obia" which means native doctoring or "sooso" which means only, have spread to other areas of Nigeria, as well as different countries in Africa. The Niger-Congo family is the most common family to which languages belong in Nigeria. Therefor, due to the many clans and tribes that base in Nigeria, this family consists of many diverse branches as well as individual languages, and dialects. Many of these languages have been affected by colinalization, as many of their alphabets are written with latin letters.
Afro Asiatic: The most dominant language branch of the Afro Asiatic Family is Chadic. Of this branch, Hausa is the most dominant individual language. Chadic is spoken by 24 million in Western Nigeria. Throughout time, Hausa people have become increasingly integrated with the Fulani people, as they move more twords the North. Many of the Fulani people have adopted the Hausa language , further distributing it throughout Nigeria. In the map to the right, which displays the dominant languages in Nigeria, yellow represents the Hausa language. Mainly, this language family was spread from relocation diffusion, of people migrating within Nigeria's border.
Languages:
English: This language was brought over to Nigeria durring 1851, when the British colonized the former primitive country. The missionarys who sought to convert many Nigerians to the Christian faith taught them their language, in hopes to better comunicate with their followers.
Native Languages: Languages such as Yoruba, Igbo, Kanuri, and Hausa came about by the major isolation of different tribes in Nigeria. Although many of the languages spoken by tribal people come from the same language branches, due to the violence between tribes, the people do not have much contanct and thus their languages have developed independently from one another. This is one of the main reasons for the many different languages in Nigeria.
Arabic: This language spread from the middle east, as many middle easterns would come to Africa as traders. Much like the colinizers from England, they spread both Islam (their religion) and Arabic (their language) to Africa.
In the picture below, the following colors represent the following languages:
Orange: Arabic Maroon/Pink: English Black: Native languages (developed from isolation in Nigeria)