any of the African languages spoken from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west. Unrelated languages were included in the various groupings classified by some early scholars as Sudanic, usually on the basis of geographic or other nonlinguistic grounds. The term Sudanic languages includes all the languages that are now classified as Niger-Congo (Niger-Congo languages) and Nilo-Saharan (Nilo-Saharan languages), as well as a few classified as Afro-Asiatic (Afro-Asiatic languages).