| Tihishit | |
|---|---|
| Tagdal | |
| Spoken in | Niger |
| Ethnicity | Igalan, Iberogan |
| Native speakers | 27,000 (2000) |
| Language family | |
| Dialects |
Tagdal
Tabarog
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | tda |
| person | Agdal |
| people | Igalan |
| language | Tagdal |
| person | |
| people | Iberogan |
| language | Tabarog |
Tihishit is a mixed Northern Songhay language of central Niger. Ethnologue considers Tagdal a "mixed Berber–Songhay language",[1][2] while other researchers consider it Northern Songhay.[3] About half of its daily vocabulary is Tuareg, and three quarters overall. There are two dialects: Tagdal spoken by the Igdalen people, pastoralists who inhabit a region to the east along the Niger border to Tahoua in Niger,[2] and Tabarog spoken by the Iberogan people of the Azawagh valley on the Niger–Mali border.
The name Tihishit is an ad-hoc cover term. Rueck & Christiansen[4] 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.[3]