Chad has two official languages, Arabic and French, and over 120 indigenous languages. A vernacular version of Arabic, Chadian Arabic, is a lingua franca and the language of commerce, spoken by 40–60% of the population.[1] The two official languages have fewer speakers than Chadian Arabic.[citation needed] Standard Arabic is spoken by around 615,000 speakers.[1] French is widely spoken in the main cities such as N'Djamena and by most men in the south of the country. Most schooling is in French.[2] The language with the most first-language speakers is probably Ngambay, with around one million speakers.[3]
Chad submitted an application to join the Arab League as a member state on 25 March 2014, which is still pending.[4]
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