Masalit_language

Masalit language

Masalit language

Maban language in Chad and Sudan

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; Arabic: ماساليت) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in West Darfur, Sudan and Ouaddaï Region, Chad.

Quick Facts Native to, Region ...

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

More information Front, Central ...

Consonants

More information Labial, Dental/ Alveolar ...
  • 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

  1. [1]
    Masalit at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Massalat at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. [2]
    Masalit language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  3. [3]
    Edgar, John (1989). A Masalit Grammar: With Notes on other languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

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.


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