Native to Niger Native speakers 27,000 (2000) ISO 639-3 tda | Ethnicity Igalan, Iberogan Language family mixed Songhay–Tuareg | |
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Dialects Gadal (Tagdal)
Barog (Tabarog) | ||
The Gadal language, Tagdal, is a mixed Northern Songhay language of central Niger. Ethnologue considers it a "mixed Berber–Songhay language", while other researchers consider it Northern Songhay. About half of its daily vocabulary is Tuareg, and three quarters overall. There are two dialects: Tagdal proper, spoken by the Igdalen people, pastoralists who inhabit a region to the east along the Niger border to Tahoua in Niger, and Tabarog, spoken by the Iberogan people of the Azawagh valley on the Niger–Mali border.
Nicolaï (1981) uses the name Tihishit as a cover term. Rueck & Christiansen say that
...the Igdalen and the Iberogan have for many purposes been treated as one group, and their speech forms are closely related. Nicolaï uses "tihishit" as a common designator for these two speech forms...; however, this term is ambiguous. "Tihishit" is a term of Tamajaq origin meaning "the language of the blacks". The Igdalen and Iberogan used it to refer to all Northern Songhay speech forms.
Meanwhile, the Iberogan sometimes refer to their language as Tagdal.