Masalit language
| Masalit | |
|---|---|
| Kanaa Masarak | |
| Native to | Chad, Sudan |
| Region | Ouaddaï, Sila (Chad), West Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan) |
| Ethnicity | Masalit |
Native speakers | 980,000 (2022–2024)[1] |
Nilo-Saharan?
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:mls – Masalitmdg – Massalat |
| Glottolog | nucl1440 Nuclear Masalitmass1262 Massalat |
| ELP | Massalat |
Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; Arabic: ماساليت) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.
Masalit, known as the Massalat, moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was 30,000 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.[2]
Phonology
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Close-mid | e | ə | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ʌ | ɔ |
| Open | a |
Consonants
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Stop/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | t | t͡ʃ | k | (ʔ) |
| voiced | b | d | d͡ʒ | g | ||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ⁿd͡ʒ | ᵑɡ | ||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | (x) | h |
| voiced | v | (z) | ||||
| Trill | r | |||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | labial | ɥ | w | |||
| central | j | |||||
- It has been stated that occasional click sounds [ǀ] and [ǃ] may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
- Sounds /r, l, m, k/ can occur as geminated [rː, lː, mː, kː].
- Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
- /z, x/ only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
- [ʔ] is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
- Sounds /p, ɥ, v/ only occur in word-initial position.[3]
Sociolects
The Masalit language has two sociolects:
- "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative grammar
- "Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from Sudanese Arabic, the regional lingua franca and language of education.
References
- ^ Masalit language at Ethnologue (28th ed., 2025)
- ^ Masalit language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Edgar, John (1989). A Masalit Grammar: With Notes on other languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Further reading
- Abdo, Alsadig Adam (November 2013). "Contrastive analysis between Masalit and English language" (PDF). Department of Linguistics. University of Khartoum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016.
- Edgar, John (January 1990). "Masalit stories". African Languages and Cultures. 3 (2). Taylor & Francis: 127–148. doi:10.1080/09544169008717716. JSTOR 1771718.
- Jakobi, Angelika (1991). "Edgar, John: A Masalit Grammar. With Notes on Other Languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989. 121 pp., map, tab., fig. (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika, 3) Preis: DM 59-". Anthropos (in German). 86 (4–6). Nomos Verlag: 599–601. JSTOR 40463695.
External links