Central Sudanic languages

Central Sudanic
Geographic
distribution		 CAR, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Cameroon
Linguistic classification

Nilo-Saharan?

  • Central Sudanic – Kadu ?
    • Central Sudanic
Subdivisions
ISO 639-5 csu
Glottolog cent2225[1]

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Central Sudanic languages in Africa

Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC) and Cameroon. They include the pygmy languages Efé and Asoa.

Blench (2011) suggests that Central Sudanic influenced the development of the noun-class system characteristic of the Niger–Congo languages.

Classification

Half a dozen groups of Central Sudanic languages are generally accepted as valid. They are customarily divided into East and West branches; Starostin (2016)[2] finds support for Eastern Central Sudanic (Lendu, Mangbetu, Lugbara, etc., concentrated in the northeast corner of DR Congo) but not for the western division, which would include Bongo–Bagirmi and Kresh scattered across Chad, the CAR, and South Sudan.

Central Sudanic 

 Eastern   (Lendu–Mangbetu) 


Mangbetu (2–3)

Mangbutu–Lese (5)

Lendu (2–3)

Moru–Madi (10)

Bongo–Bagirmi (40 languages)


 Birri–Kresh 


Birri (1)

Kresh (2)




Starostin (2011) notes that the poorly attested language Mimi of Decorse is suggestive of Central Sudanic, though he provisionally treats it as an isolate. Boyeldieu (2010) states that the inclusion of Kresh has yet to be demonstrated, but Starostin (2016) finds good support, with Birri being its closest relative.

References

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Central Sudanic". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ George Starostin (2016) The Nilo-Saharan hypothesis tested through lexicostatistics: current state of affairs
  • Roger Blench. 2011. "Can Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic help us understand the evolution of Niger-Congo noun classes?", CALL 41, Leiden.
  • Starostin, George. On Mimi, Journal of Language Relationship, v. 6, 2011, pp. 115–140.


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