Masalit language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Masalit kana masara |
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Spoken in: | Sudan, Chad | |
Region: | Dar Masalit (Gharb Darfur) | |
Total speakers: | 0.25 million (1983) | |
Language family: | Nilo-Saharan Maban Mabang Masalit Masalit |
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Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | none | |
ISO 639-2: | ssa | |
ISO 639-3: | mls | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. |
Masalit (autonym kana masara) is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Masalit ethnic group in western Darfur. It has two sociolects: "heavy" Masalit, with a complicated agglutinative grammar, spoken by higher-ranking people and in the countryside, and "light", 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.
[edit] Bibliography
- Edgar, John. A Masalit grammar: with notes on other languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: D. Reimer, 1989. (Sprache und Oralitat in Afrika; 3).