The Chadic languages constitute a language family of perhaps 200 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic and Cameroon, belonging to the Afroasiatic phylum. The most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa, a lingua franca of much of inland West Africa.
Newman (1977) divided the family into four groups, which have been accepted in all subsequent literature. The subbranching, however, is not as robust; Blench (2006), for example, only accepts the A/B bifurcation of East Chadic.