West Africa may also be envisaged as a tapestry of language and ethnicity which predates colonialization. Three distinct language families are represented, each found also outside West Africa: in the North, Nilo-Saharan includes both Kanuri and Songhai, while Hausa, spoken by more West Africans than any other indigenous language, belongs to Afro-Asiatic (which also includes Arabic).
Languages spoken in the south and west belong to the extensive Niger-Congo family which also included the Bantu languages that predominate in central, eastern and southern sub-Saharan Africa. Among the important members of this group are Wolof and Mande in the west, More (Mossi) in the centre, and Akan-Twi, Fon-Ewe, Yoruba, and Igbo in the south; Fulfulde is the most widely distributed language in this group by virtue of the historically *pastoral mode of life of its speakers, the Fulani (Peul, French). Distinguishable West African languages are extremely numerous—Nigeria alone has in excess of four hundred. Most West Africans are multilingual in African languages, and may additionally speak a language of European origin, Arabic (in the north), or pidgin English (in the south).
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