Nupe

Nupe is spoken by the Nupe people mainly in Niger State, particularly around Bida, Lapai, Agaie and along the Niger River, with communities also in parts of Kwara and Kogi States. It is the language of the historic Nupe Kingdom, and Islam has been a major influence on Nupe society for centuries, shaping vocabulary, education and cultural life alongside indigenous tradition and craftsmanship, for which Bida in particular is well known. Nupe is used in everyday community life, local radio broadcasting, Islamic teaching contexts and, to a limited extent, in early primary education in some areas, though English and Hausa also have wide currency in Niger State. Dialect variation exists across the Nupe-speaking area, with the Bida dialect generally regarded as the reference variety used in writing and broadcasting. The language remains actively spoken across generations, though as elsewhere in Nigeria, younger urban speakers increasingly mix Nupe with Hausa, Pidgin or English.

Nupe is written in a Latin-based orthography using subdots for particular vowel qualities and diacritic marks in linguistic and academic descriptions to indicate tone, since Nupe is a tonal language in which pitch distinguishes words. Everyday and informal writing often simplifies or omits these marks. Documentation and dictionary work by linguists and Nupe scholars has contributed to a broadly recognised standard spelling, though variation exists in less formal contexts. Given the long history of Islam among the Nupe, Arabic script (ajami-style adaptation) has historically also been used for religious and some scholarly writing in the region, alongside the Latin-based orthography now used more widely for general literacy.