Most countries in West Africa use English, French, Portuguese, or Arabic as their official languages and lingua francas, so you’d be forgiven for thinking the region isn’t very linguistically diverse. But in fact, West Africa is one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the planet, with hundreds of languages spoken vigorously by indigenous communities all across the region. These languages comprise multiple families—Niger–Congo (e.g., Yoruba), Afroasiatic (e.g., Hausa), and Nilo–Saharan (e.g., Tagdal).
Tagdal has 65,000 native speakers as of 2021, according to Ethnologue. The language is sometimes alternatively called Tihishit, which derives from a Tamajaq word meaning “the language of the blacks.” Although many minority languages in Africa are endangered, Tagdal is in good standing, perceived positively by speakers and spoken by the majority of the Igdalen and Iberogan ethnic groups to which it’s native. However, it’s under threat of erosion from French, Arabic, Hausa, and Tawallemmet, all of which boast far more speakers and prestige, making it ever more important to support the language with high-quality resources and translation services. That’s what we at TranslationServices.com aim to do with our new Tagdal translation services.
Our team can happily provide a free quote for our Tagdal translation services—simply ask for one!
The unique mixed language of Tagdal
Tagdal is spoken by two separate ethnic groups: the Iberogan, among whom are several monolinguals, and the Igdalen. The Igdalen primarily live in a region around Tahoua, a city in western Niger, while the Iberogan inhabit the Azawagh Valley on the Niger–Mali border. The two ethnic groups speak separate dialects of the language, with the Igdalen speaking Tagdal proper and the Iberogan speaking Tabarog, although they sometimes refer to their own language as Tagdal. The language belongs to the Northern Songhay group of languages within the Nilo–Saharan language family, but it’s considered a mixed language with strong Berber influences from the nearby Tuareg peoples.
Tagdal is an agglutinative language, which means it inflects words by “gluing” prefixes and suffixes to stems instead of fusing them to the stem in more complicated ways, as in languages like German or Russian. The language is prefix-heavy, marking the subject on verbs through a prefix. Negation is also expressed through prefixes, with Tagdal featuring two different negation prefixes: one that denotes the past tense and one that indicates the future tense or habitual aspect. Tagdal translation can be tricky due to the many differences between Tagdal and English, but if you work with skilled native-speaking translators like ours, you don’t have to worry.
Let us accommodate your needs with our flexible Tagdal translation services.
We’re passionate about accommodating our clients’ diverse needs when it comes to Tagdal translation services. To this end, we’ve rounded out our Tagdal translation team with both Igdalen and Iberogan people, covering both the Tagdal proper and Tabarog dialects. Whether you’re looking to translate an English-language document into Tagdal or a text in Tagdal into English, our team is eager to serve you, working diligently in both translation directions.
We’re also proud to offer specialized translation services to cater to the specific needs of clients in academia, the business world, the literary scene, and more. Interested in translating a research questionnaire into Tagdal to survey the local populace? Let us help! Looking to translate press releases or ad copy into Tagdal to entice locals to your business? Our team can help! Want to translate a native Tagdal story into English to share with the world or an English-language book into Tagdal to enrich the local body of literature? That’s right up our alley! We provide various types of translation services for all sorts of projects and subject matters, so if you have any special requests, simply ask!
We’re ready to help you with your Tagdal translation project. If you’re ready to get started, just message us!