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Western Sahara [a] is a disputed ... Throughout the nine decades of Spanish colonial presence, one of the primary spoken languages in Western Sahara came to be Spanish.
Sahrawis' native language is the Hassānīya, a variety of Arabic originally spoken by the Beni Hassan Arabian tribes of the Western Sahara. It has almost completely replaced the Berber languages originally spoken in this region.
Modern Standard Arabic and Spanish, the former colonial language, are the official languages of the Polisario Front, based in Tindouf, Algeria. Hassaniya, an Arabic dialect, is the native language spoken in Western Sahara and in the refugee camps in Tindouf in Algeria.
Arabic is the sole official language identified in the Sahrawi constitution, and the republic only uses Spanish for radio and TV broadcasts [7] and state journalism. [8] The Cervantes Institute estimates that there are 22,000 second-language speakers, 5% of the population, in Western Sahara, plus a larger number in the refugee camps in Algeria. [9]
Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea. The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara.
The people of Western Sahara speak the Ḥassānīya dialect of Arabic, also spoken in northern Mauritania, and Spanish. They are of mixed Arab, African (including Berber descent), many consider themselves to be Arab .
Western Sahara portal The main article for this category is Languages of Western Sahara . Wikimedia Commons has media related to Languages of Western Sahara .
In Western Sahara it is common for code-switching to occur between Hassaniya Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and Spanish, as Spain had previously controlled this region; in the rest of Hassaniya-speaking lands, French is the additional language spoken.