Tegali (also spelled Tagale, Tegele, Tekele, Togole) is a Kordofanian language in the Rashad family, which is thought by some to belong to the hypothetical Niger–Congo phylum (Greenberg 1963, Schadeberg 1981, Williamson & Blench 2000).

The Rashad family of language consists of two dialect clusters, Tegali and Tagoi, which share about 70% basic vocabulary on the 100-word Swadesh list.

[4] The most conspicuous difference between the two dialect clusters is that Tagoi has a complex system of noun classes while Tegali does not.

Different explanations exist for why Tegali dialects lack a noun class system.

Greenberg (1963) excludes the possibility of mass borrowing of basic vocabulary in Tagoi and assumes the loss of noun classes in the Tegali dialects.