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- 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.
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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.
- None
- ca. 70 million for all branches listed below.
- Proposed language family
- 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...
The Nilotic languages are spoken by some 14 million people ( see Nilotes), including the Dinka, Nuer, Luo, Turkana, Kalenjin, and Maasai. Nilo-Saharan languages, Group of perhaps 115 African languages spoken by more than 27 million people from Mali to Ethiopia and from southernmost Egypt to Tanzania.
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).
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.
Saharan, Nilotic and Central Sudanic languages (previously grouped under the hypothetical Nilo-Saharan macro-family), are present in East Africa and Sahel. Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar and parts of the Comoros. Khoe–Kwadi languages are spoken principally in Namibia and Botswana.
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.
