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- There are around 80 languages in the Nilo-Saharan family. These tonal languages are spread throughout parts of central, eastern and northeastern Africa, including places like Chad, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Examples of Nilo-Saharan languages include Lugbara in Uganda, Zarma in Niger and Dholuo in Kenya.
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The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet.
- 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...
In terms of numbers of speakers, the most significant divisions of Nilo-Saharan languages include Central Sudanic, Fur, Nilotic, Nubian, Saharan, Songhai, and Surmic. Songhai is spoken by more than 2 million people in Mali and Niger, and Kanuri (a Saharan language) is spoken by about 4.5 million in northeastern Nigeria and adjacent Chad and Niger.
Jan 31, 2023 · There are around 80 languages in the Nilo-Saharan family. These tonal languages are spread throughout parts of central, eastern and northeastern Africa, including places like Chad, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Examples of Nilo-Saharan languages include Lugbara in Uganda, Zarma in Niger and Dholuo in Kenya.
SHOW ALL QUESTIONS. The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet.
Other modern Nilo-Saharan languages with more than a million speakers are the Saharan language Kanuri (mainly in Nigeria), Nile Nubian, and the Nilotic languages Dinka (South Sudan), Kalenjin (Kenya), Luo (mainly in Kenya and Tanzania), and Teso (Uganda and Kenya). Of these, only Kanuri is a lingua franca in the proper sense.
Cite. Permissions. Share. Abstract. 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.
