Languages of the Nuba Mountains in the context of West Kordofan

The Nubian languages are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. Nubian languages were spoken throughout much of Sudan, but as a result of Arabization they are today mostly limited to the Nile Valley between Aswan (southern Egypt) and Al Dabbah. In the 1956 Census of Sudan there were 167,831 speakers of Nubian languages. Nubian is not to be confused with the various Nuba languages spoken in villages in the Nuba Mountains and Darfur.

More recent classifications, such as those in Glottolog, consider that Nubian languages form a primary language family. Older classifications consider Nubian to be a branch of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, a proposal that has low support among linguists due to a lack of supporting data.

The Kordofanian languages are a geographic grouping of five language groups spoken in the Nuba Mountains of the South Kordofan region of Sudan: Talodi–Heiban languages, Lafofa languages, Rashad languages, Katla languages and Kadu languages. The first four groups are sometimes regarded as branches of the hypothetical Niger–Congo family, whereas Kadu is now widely seen as a branch of the proposed Nilo-Saharan family. The Kordofanian languages may be the oldest group of languages in the region.

The Nuba people are indigenous inhabitants of southern Sudan. The Nuba are made up of 50 various indigenous ethnic groups who inhabit the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan state in Sudan, encompassing multiple distinct people that speak different languages which belong to at least two unrelated language families. Estimates of the Nuba population vary widely; the Sudanese government estimated that they numbered 2.07 million in 2003.

The term Nuba should not be confused with the Nubians, an unrelated ethnic group speaking the Nubian languages living in northern Sudan and southern Egypt, although the Hill Nubians, who live in the Nuba Mountains, are also considered part of the Nubian people.