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The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, [1] mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to ...
- Overview
- Linguistic characteristics
- Morphology
- Verbs
- Gender
The considerable typological diversity that characterizes the Nilo-Saharan languages corresponds to their wide geographic spread. Structural properties—for example, with respect to sound systems and word order—often are shared with unrelated neighbouring language groups. Thus, rich and complex consonant systems with universally rare distinctions—su...
The considerable typological diversity that characterizes the Nilo-Saharan languages corresponds to their wide geographic spread. Structural properties—for example, with respect to sound systems and word order—often are shared with unrelated neighbouring language groups. Thus, rich and complex consonant systems with universally rare distinctions—su...
Apart from widespread lexical roots whose form and meaning relationships are similar, there are grammatical properties that clearly point toward a common historical origin for the Nilo-Saharan languages. Bari, a Nilotic language of South Sudan, demonstrates one widespread morphological property whereby either the singular or the plural form of a no...
The verb tends to constitute the most complex aspect of Nilo-Saharan languages. It frequently involves extensive marking for conjugational features such as person, number, tense (the expression of time), aspect, or voice, with consonant mutation often accompanying such morphological processes. A widespread and rather permanent distinction is that b...
Gender distinctions between masculine and feminine (or neuter) nouns are common in the neighbouring Afro-Asiatic family (as they are in Indo-European languages) but not in Nilo-Saharan, which has only a few exceptions. Gender as a derivational property of nouns is found, for example, in Southern and Western Nilotic languages, whereas in the Eastern...
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What languages are spoken in the Nilo-Saharan region?
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What are Nilotic languages?
What is the earliest written language in the Nilo-Saharan family?
This chapter introduces the expanse of the Nilo-Saharan region, the language family that spread across Central and Eastern Africa. It lists the range of languages and language groups within the region such as Kunama, Eastern Sudanic, Nara, Berta, Nilotic, and Surmic. The geographical spread probably reflects the chronological and historical ...
According to linguist Joseph Greenberg, the language family is divided up into three subgroups: [4] Eastern Nilotic languages such as Turkana and Maasai. Southern Nilotic languages such as Kalenjin and Datooga. Western Nilotic languages such as Luo, Nuer and Dinka. Before Greenberg 's reclassification, Nilotic was used to refer to Western ...
The diffusion of Nilo-Saharan languages. The original expansion of the Nilo-Saharan family may have been associated with the Aquatic industry. This industry, which dates to the 8th millennium bce, is a conglomeration of cultures that exploited the food resources of lakes, rivers, and surrounding areas from Lake Rudolf in East Africa to the bend of the Niger River in West Africa during a long ...
The Nilo-Saharan family consists of approximately 160 languages and is one of four linguistic families in Africa. The family is subdivided into ten branches and further into other subgroups, languages, and dialects. The Nilo-Saharan languages stretch across the eastern Sahara, the upper Nile valley, and the regions surrounding East Africa's ...
The eastern division includes such languages as Avokaya, Asua, Lendu, Lese, Lugbara, Lulubo, Madi, Mangbetu, Moru, and Ngiti. Nilo-Saharan languages - Writing, African, Diversity: For most Nilo-Saharan languages, there is no ancient literary tradition. A notable exception is Old Nubian, which was probably in use among Christian communities ...
