Related Research Articles
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 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. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.
Gustav Nachtigal was a German military surgeon and explorer of Central and West Africa. He is further known as the German Empire's consul-general for Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His mission as commissioner resulted in Togoland and Kamerun becoming the first colonies of a German colonial empire. The Gustav-Nachtigal-Medal, awarded by the Berlin Geographical Society, is named after him.
The Masalit are an ethnic group inhabiting western Sudan and eastern Chad. They speak the Masalit language.
Amdang is a language closely related to Fur, which together constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. It is mainly spoken in Chad, north of the town of Biltine, and sporadically elsewhere in Ouaddaï Region. There are also small colonies of speakers in Darfur near Woda'a and Fafa, and in Kordofan in the Abu Daza district and at Magrur north of Bara. Most of the ethnic group now speaks Arabic.
Masalit is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.
An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding influence of language contact, if different layers of its vocabulary or morphology point in different directions and it is not clear which represents the ancestral form of the language. Some poorly known extinct languages, such as Gutian and Cacán, are simply unclassifiable, and it is unlikely the situation will ever change.
The Languages of Africa is a 1963 book of essays by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, in which the author sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today. It is an expanded and extensively revised version of his 1955 work Studies in African Linguistic Classification, which was itself a compilation of eight articles which Greenberg had published in the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology between 1949 and 1954. It was first published in 1963 as Part II of the International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 29, No. 1; however, its second edition of 1966, in which it was published as an independent work, is more commonly cited.
The Maban languages are a small family of languages which have been included in the hypothetical Nilo-Saharan language family.
Chad has two official languages, Arabic and French, and over 120 indigenous languages. A vernacular version of Arabic, Chadian Arabic, is a lingua franca and the language of commerce, spoken by 40–60% of the population. The two official languages have fewer speakers than Chadian Arabic. Standard Arabic is spoken by around 615,000 speakers. French is widely spoken in the main cities such as N'Djamena and by most men in the south of the country. Most schooling is in French. The language with the most first-language speakers is probably Ngambay, with around one million speakers.
The Wadai Sultanate, sometimes referred to as the Maba Sultanate, was an African sultanate located to the east of Lake Chad in present-day Chad and the Central African Republic. It emerged in the seventeenth century under the leadership of the first sultan, Abd al-Karim, who overthrew the ruling Tunjur people of the area. It occupied land previously held by the Sultanate of Darfur to the northeast of the Sultanate of Baguirmi.
Kimr or Gimr is an ethnic group in West Darfur in Sudan and Chad. They speak Gimr, a dialect of Tama, a Nilo-Saharan language. The population of this ethnicity possibly is below 10,000. One 1996 source puts the population at over 50,000.
The Maba, also called Bargo or Wadai people, are a Sunni Muslim ethnic group found primarily in the mountains of Wadai region in eastern Chad and southern Sudan. Their population is estimated to be about 542,000. Other estimates place the total number of Bargo people in Sudan to be about 28,000.
The Wadai War, also known as the Ouaddai War, was waged by France and its African allies against the Wadai Empire and its allies from 1906 to 1912. Located in what today would be eastern Chad and western Sudan, Wadai fiercely resisted the French invasion. Regardless, much of Wadai including its capital Abéché fell to the invaders in 1909, forcing the empire's ruler Dud Murra to continue his resistance from outlying provinces and allied states. He managed to gain the support of the Sultanate of Darfur and Dar Masalit, and used these areas as rear bases during his attempts to oust the French. Doing so, he enjoyed some success, and inflicted several defeats on French-led forces. In order to legitimize their intervention, the French installed Dud Murra's relative Adam Asil as puppet ruler in Wadai. After losing most of his forces and allies, Dud Murra was forced to surrender in 1911. Regardless, unrest initially continued: a major anti-French revolt broke out soon after Dud Murra's defeat, and an anti-European conspiracy was allegedly organized with the support of Adam Asil. The last effective anti-French resistance in Wadai was suppressed by 1912 and the region remained a part of French colonial empire until 1960.
The Daju people are a group of seven distinct ethnicities speaking related languages living on both sides of the Chad-Sudan border and in the Nuba Mountains. Separated by distance and speaking different languages, at present, they generally have little cultural affinity to each other.
The Northern Eastern Sudanic, Eastern k Sudanic, Ek Sudanic, NNT or Astaboran languages may form a primary division of the proposed Eastern Sudanic family. They are characterised by having a /k/ in the first person singular pronoun "I/me", as opposed to the Southern Eastern Sudanic languages, which have an /n/. Nyima has yet to be conclusively linked to the other languages, and would appear to be the closest relative of Ek Sudanic rather than Ek Sudanic proper.
The official languages of the Central African Republic are French and Sango. In total there are about 72 languages in the country.
Maba is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban branch spoken in Chad and Sudan. It is divided into several dialects, and serves as a local trade language. Maba is closely related to the Masalit language. Most speakers of Maba reside in Chad with 542,000 speakers as of 2019. In 2022 there were 28,000 speakers in Sudan where the language is known as Sulaihab.
Mimi of Nachtigal, or Mimi-N, is a language of Chad that is attested only in a word list labelled "Mimi" that was collected ca. 1870 by Gustav Nachtigal. Nachtigal's data was subsequently published by Lukas & Voelckers (1938).
Mimi of Decorse, also known as Mimi of Gaudefroy-Demombynes and Mimi-D, is a language of Chad that is attested only in a word list labelled "Mimi" that was collected ca. 1900 by G. J. Decorse and published by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes. Joseph Greenberg (1960) classified it as a Maban language, like the rather remote Maban relative Mimi of Nachtigal. However, George Starostin (2011) rejects this classification, arguing that similarities to Maban are due to contact with locally dominant Maba, and provisionally regards it as a language isolate, though it is suggestive of Central Sudanic.
The Mbugu people, also known as the Va'maa, Ma'a are an ethnic Bantu and linguistic group hailing from western Usambara Mountains of Lushoto District in Tanga Region of Tanzania. Tanzania's Mbugu language is one of the few true hybrid languages, combining Bantu grammar with Cushitic lexicon. In actuality, the people speak two languages: one closely related to Pare and the other mixed. They are approximately 60,000 living Mbugu people.