Sudanese Arabic, also referred to locally as Common Sudanese Arabic refers to the various related varieties of Arabic spoken in Sudan as well as parts of Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Chad. Sudanese Arabic has also influenced a number of Arabic-based pidgins and creoles, including Juba Arabic, widely used in South Sudan, as well as Ki-Nubi, spoken by the Nubi communities of Kenya and Uganda. Approximately 33 million people speak Sudanese Arabic as their first language and approximately 9 million speak it as a secondary language.
Sudanese Arabic is highly diverse. Famed Sudanese linguist Awn ash-Sharif Gasim noted that "it is difficult to speak of a 'Sudanese colloquial language' in general, simply because there is not a single dialect used simultaneously in all the regions where Arabic is the mother tongue. Every region, and almost every tribe, has its own brand of Arabic. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Sultanates of Darfur and Sennar emerged and adopted Arabic as an official language, employing the language in public documents and as an intermediary language between the myriad of languages spoken at the time.
Like other varieties of Arabic outside of Modern Standard Arabic, Sudanese Arabic is typically not used in formal writing or on Sudanese news channels. However, Sudanese Arabic is employed extensively on social media and various genres of Sudanese poetry (such as dobeyt and halamanteesh), as well as in Sudanese cinema and television.
According to the Joshua Project, there are virtually no Christians in Sudan and Christianity is not growing. The Bible was translated in 1927 and revised in 1978.
Sudan has both the largest number and the highest rate of out-of-school
children in the Middle East and North Africa region. Up to 3.6 million children
aged 5 to 13 years are out-of-school – more than half are girls.
In Sudan, literacy rates also remain low, particularly among young women:
overall, some 45.2 percent of girls and women aged 15-24 are illiterate.
