Zarma is the second-most common language in the country, after Hausa, which is spoken in south-central Niger.

With over 6 million speakers, Zarma is easily the most widely spoken Songhay language.

Alternative names for Zarma are Djerma, Jerma, Dyabarma, Dyarma, Dyerma, Adzerma, Zabarma, Zarbarma, Zarmaci or Zerma.

Cities where Zarma is spoken include Tillaberi, Dosso, Niamey, Tahoua and Agadez.

Zarma is a tonal language with four tones: high, low, fall and rise.

In Dosso, some linguists (such as Tersis) have observed a dipping (falling-rising) tone for certain words: ma ("the name").

The tradition of writing in Arabic dates back to the arrival of Islam via merchants of the Trans-Saharan trade, as early as the 12th century.

Latin alphabet came to be used for Zarma and other indigenous languages of the region in the beginning of the 19th century with the arrival of European Christian Missionaries and colonial administrators.

Table below illustrates the letters used in the Zarma Latin alphabet: Nasal vowels are written with a tilde or a following ⟨n⟩ or ⟨ŋ⟩.

Most of the letters are pronounced with the same values as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the exceptions being ⟨j⟩ [ɟ] (approximately English j but more palatalized), ⟨y⟩ [j], ⟨r⟩ [ɾ] (a flap).

Usually, the singular forms are used if the plurality is indicated by a number or other contextual clue, especially for the indefinite form: Soboro ga ba ("There are a lot of mosquitoes"); ay zanka hinkǎ ("my two children"); hasaraw hinko kulu ra ("in both of these catastrophes").

There is no gender or case in Zarma so the third-person singular pronoun a can mean "he", "she", "it", "her", "him", "his", "hers", "its", "one" or "one's", according to the context and its position in the sentence.

There is a special modal marker, ka or ga, according to the dialect, to indicate the completive aspect with emphasis on the subject.

The existential gǒ (negative sí) is not a verb (White-Kaba, 1994, calls it a "verboid") and has no aspect; it means "exist" and usually links a noun phrase to a descriptive term, such as a place, a price or a participle: A go fuwo ra ("She's in the house").

It has no aspect or negative form and is placed after a noun phrase, sometimes for emphasis: Ni do no ay ga koy ("It's to your house I'm going").

Other words, such as gòró, cíyà, tíyà and bárà are much rarer and usually express ideas, such as the subjunctive, which gǒ and tí cannot handle.

The connector ká implies that the second verb is a result of the first or that the first is the reason or cause of the second: ka ga ŋwa, "come (in order to) eat."

When two nouns are placed together, the first noun modifies the second, showing possession, purpose or description: Fati tirǎ (Fati's book), haŋyaŋ hari (drinking water), fu meeyo (the door of a house).

are placed after the noun: Ay baaba wura muusu boŋey ("My father's gold lion heads", Tersis, 1981).