Nilo-Saharan languages

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Nilo-Saharan
Geographic
distribution:		 Central and East Africa
Genetic
classification:		 suggested association with Niger-Congo
Subdivisions:
ISO 639-2: ssa
Map showing the distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages
Map showing the distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers (whence the term "Nilo-"), including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet. Its member languages extend, however, through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria and Mali in the northwest; to Benin, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the south; and Egypt to Tanzania in the east (excluding Somalia). The largest part of its major subfamilies are found in the modern nation of Sudan, through which the Nile River flows in all its incarnations: the White and Blue Nile, which join to form the main Nile at Khartoum. As seen in the hyphenated name (compare map at right), Nilo-Saharan is primarily a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile basin and its tributaries as well as the central Sahara desert.

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[edit] Characteristics

Roughly 11 million people spoke Nilo-Saharan languages as of 1987, according to Merritt Ruhlen's estimate. The family is internally extremely diverse - far more so than Indo-European, or even Niger-Congo - and is rather controversial; few historical linguists have attempted work on the family as a whole, and several have denied its validity. Particularly controversial is the inclusion of Songhay, the language of Timbuktu and its empire.

The Ethnologue by SIL, following Anbessa Tefera and Peter Unseth, considers the Shabo language to be Nilo-Saharan, but otherwise unclassified. It is sometimes considered a language isolate, following Christopher Ehret.

Some linguists, including Roger Blench, consider the Kadu languages (also called Kadugli languages or Tumtum) to be Nilo-Saharan, while others follow Greenberg in classing them as Kordofanian languages, or Ehret in considering them a small isolated family. Proposals have sometimes been made to add Mande (usually classed as Niger-Congo) to Nilo-Saharan, largely due to its many noteworthy similarities with Songhay.

The extinct Meroitic language of ancient Kush has sometimes been suggested as a probable member of Nilo-Saharan; however, too little is known of the language to classify it with any confidence. The same may reasonably be said of the rather more recently extinct Oropom language in Uganda (if it ever existed), for whom connections with Kuliak or Nilotic have been suggested.

Proposals for the external relationships of Nilo-Saharan typically center on Niger-Congo: Gregersen (1972) grouped the two together to form Kongo-Saharan, whereas Blench (1995) actually proposed that Niger-Congo may simply be a member of Nilo-Saharan (coordinate with Central Sudanic.) However, such theories are treated with reserve by most historical linguists.

[edit] Major Languages

Within the larger Nilo-Saharan language family are a number of major African languages with at least half a million speakers (SIL Ethnologue, 2005 figures):

  • Kanuri (3,340,000, all dialects), with speakers found from Niger to northeastern Nigeria, where it is a major national ethnic group.
  • Songhay or Songhai (2.9 million, all dialects), with its speakers widely spread along the Niger River in Mali and Burkina Faso. The largest variety is Zarma, a major language of Niger, while Songhay is also spoken throughout the historic Songhai Empire, including its former capital Gao and the well-known city of Timbuktu. It's inclusion in the Nilo-Saharan family is controversial, however.
  • Lango (977,680), spoken by one of Uganda's major ethnicities, found in Lango region in the center of the country. Along with the Acholi people (below), the Lango people were targets of severe ethnic persecution under dictator Idi Amin, a member of a fellow Nilo-Saharan ethnicity, the Kakwa.
  • Masai (883,000), spoken by the Masai people of Kenya and Tanzania, one of the most well-known African ethnic groups internationally.[1]
  • Nuer (804,907), the language of the Nuer tribe, another powerful Southern Sudanese ethnicity.
  • Acholi (791,796), the other member of the Luo-Acholi subfamily within Western Nilotic, spoken in Acholiland in Uganda and in Opari District of Sudan. It is closely related to Lango.
  • Fur (501,800), notable as one of the major languages of Darfur (lit. "the home of the Fur" in Arabic), the Sudanese province currently in the news for its humanitarian crisis.
  • Nubian (495,000, all dialects), the language of Ancient Egypt's traditional nemesis Nubia, extending today from southern Egypt into northern Sudan.

[edit] Subclassification

[edit] Greenberg, modified by Bender 1989

According to Joseph Greenberg (The Languages of Africa) as initially modified by Lionel Bender (and adopted by the Ethnologue), they are classified into the following branches:

  1. Komuz languages
  2. Saharan languages (including Kanuri language)
  3. Songhay languages
  4. Fur languages (including Fur language)
  5. Maban languages
  6. (Chari-Nile languages - later rejected, placing the 4 branches below on an equal footing with those above)
    1. Central Sudanic languages
    2. Kunama language
    3. Berta language
    4. Eastern Sudanic languages (including Nubian languages and Nilotic languages)

[edit] Bender 1997

Lionel Bender classifies them as follows, slightly modifying his 1989 classification:

  1. Songay languages
  2. Saharan languages
  3. Kuliak languages
  4. Satellite-Core:
    1. Maban languages
    2. Fur languages
    3. Berta language
    4. Kunama language
    5. Core Nilo-Saharan languages
      1. Eastern Sudanic languages
      2. Central Sudanic languages
      3. Komuz languages
      4. Kadu languages

[edit] Ehret 2001

In his reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan, Christopher Ehret classifies them in a more detailed fashion, as follows:

[edit] Bibliography

  • Lionel Bender, 1997. The Nilo-Saharan Languages: A Comparative Essay. München.
  • Christopher Ehret, 2001. A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. Köln.
  • Joseph Greenberg, 1963. The Languages of Africa (International Journal of American Linguistics 29.1). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

[edit] External relationships

  • Roger Blench. "Is Niger-Congo simply a branch of Nilo-Saharan?", in ed. Nicolai & Rottland, Fifth Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium. Nice, 24-29 August 1992. Proceedings. (Nilo-Saharan 10). Koeln: Koeppe Verlag. 1995. pp.36-49.
  • Edgar Gregersen. "Kongo-Saharan". Journal of African Languages, 11, 1:69-89. 1972.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links