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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 ...
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.
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- Overview
- 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 era of wetter climate and higher lake levels than prevail today. The subsequent deterioration of the Saharan environment in the 6th millennium bce may be the reason for the relative geographic and linguistic isolation of several groups, especially in the western and central zones—e.g., the geographic locations where the Songhai, Saharan, Fur, Maban, Taman, or Daju languages were situated at the end of the 20th century.
In recent times several Nilo-Saharan languages in these areas, such as Fur, Kanuri, and Songhai, became associated with centralized political units whose states formed important chains in trans-Saharan trade routes. The Songhai language, now spoken by more than a million people living along the Niger River in West Africa from Mali to Nigeria, developed into the lingua franca of the Songhai empire, which reached its peak in the 15th century. The Songhai speech community probably absorbed speakers from various other linguistic communities through a process of primary language shift. 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.
Such processes of linguistic expansion, while presumably common in human history, sometimes result in the extinction of other languages as the domains of language use begin to overlap to the extent that one of them becomes obsolete. Although the situation was somewhat less dramatic than in some other parts of the world, a number of Nilo-Saharan languages were endangered at the beginning of the 21st century because their speakers shifted toward other primary languages for daily communication. Such shifts can be observed for a number of Nilo-Saharan languages spoken by ethnic groups that generally number fewer than 1,000 speakers—e.g., the Kuliak language Nyang’i (Uganda), the Surmic language Kwegu (Ethiopia), and the Nilotic language Okiek (Kenya). Gule (or Anej), a Komuz language of Sudan, is now extinct, and the people speak Arabic.
The Maban languages, including Masalit, in Chad also are under pressure from Arabic, an important lingua franca and a prestigious language of education in the area. These gradual shifts in language domains sometimes are accelerated by other factors. The construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt in the 1960s, for example, forced many speakers of the Nile Nubian variety of Kenuz and Fadicca to abandon their ancestral land along the Nile, between Aswān and the Sudanese border, and to relocate to “New Nubia,” north of Aswān. An increase in daily contact with speakers of Arabic and the higher prestige of this official language of Egypt have resulted in a decrease in Nubian language use and competence. Massive resettlement schemes in the 1980s and ’90s for Sudanese refugees in such neighbouring countries as Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have led to new multilingual settings. Moreover, modern urbanization may turn out to have a catalytic effect on the diffusion of particular languages at the expense of others. The majority of the more than 100 Nilo-Saharan languages nevertheless thrive as oral, and sometimes as written, means of communication.
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 era of wetter climate and higher lake levels than prevail today. The subsequent deterioration of the Saharan environment in the 6th millennium bce may be the reason for the relative geographic and linguistic isolation of several groups, especially in the western and central zones—e.g., the geographic locations where the Songhai, Saharan, Fur, Maban, Taman, or Daju languages were situated at the end of the 20th century.
In recent times several Nilo-Saharan languages in these areas, such as Fur, Kanuri, and Songhai, became associated with centralized political units whose states formed important chains in trans-Saharan trade routes. The Songhai language, now spoken by more than a million people living along the Niger River in West Africa from Mali to Nigeria, developed into the lingua franca of the Songhai empire, which reached its peak in the 15th century. The Songhai speech community probably absorbed speakers from various other linguistic communities through a process of primary language shift. 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.
Such processes of linguistic expansion, while presumably common in human history, sometimes result in the extinction of other languages as the domains of language use begin to overlap to the extent that one of them becomes obsolete. Although the situation was somewhat less dramatic than in some other parts of the world, a number of Nilo-Saharan languages were endangered at the beginning of the 21st century because their speakers shifted toward other primary languages for daily communication. Such shifts can be observed for a number of Nilo-Saharan languages spoken by ethnic groups that generally number fewer than 1,000 speakers—e.g., the Kuliak language Nyang’i (Uganda), the Surmic language Kwegu (Ethiopia), and the Nilotic language Okiek (Kenya). Gule (or Anej), a Komuz language of Sudan, is now extinct, and the people speak Arabic.
The Maban languages, including Masalit, in Chad also are under pressure from Arabic, an important lingua franca and a prestigious language of education in the area. These gradual shifts in language domains sometimes are accelerated by other factors. The construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt in the 1960s, for example, forced many speakers of the Nile Nubian variety of Kenuz and Fadicca to abandon their ancestral land along the Nile, between Aswān and the Sudanese border, and to relocate to “New Nubia,” north of Aswān. An increase in daily contact with speakers of Arabic and the higher prestige of this official language of Egypt have resulted in a decrease in Nubian language use and competence. Massive resettlement schemes in the 1980s and ’90s for Sudanese refugees in such neighbouring countries as Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have led to new multilingual settings. Moreover, modern urbanization may turn out to have a catalytic effect on the diffusion of particular languages at the expense of others. The majority of the more than 100 Nilo-Saharan languages nevertheless thrive as oral, and sometimes as written, means of communication.
Abstract. Interspersed between two other major phyla on the African continent, Afro-Asiatic (mainly to the north) and Niger-Congo (mainly to the south), lies the Nilo-Saharan phylum. In this chapter a survey is presented of the major groups classified as members of this phylum by Greenberg and other authors in subsequent contributions.
Nilo-Saharan languages spoken in the more eastern zones, such as many Nilotic and several Surmic languages as well as those belonging to the Kuliak and Kadu groups, belong to the former type, whereas western and northern Nilo-Saharan languages such as Fur, Kunama, and the Maban and Nubian languages have verb-final structures.
The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the ...
Quick Reference. This linguistic stock (hereafter NS), also called Nilo-Sahelian, includes approximately 160 languages; it covers major areas southeast, east, and north of Lake Victoria in East Africa, with a westward extension ... From: Nilo-Saharan Languages in International Encyclopedia of Linguistics » Subjects: Linguistics. Reference entries.
