Masalit language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Masalit
kana masara
Spoken in: Sudan, Chad 
Region: Dar Masalit (Darfur)
Total speakers: 240,000
Language family: Nilo-Saharan
 Maban
  Mabang
   Masalit
    Masalit
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: ssa
ISO 639-3: mls

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).
  • Ethnologue report
Languages