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The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As of 2012, the Cushitic languages with over one million speakers were Oromo, Somali, Beja, Afar, Hadiyya, Kambaata, and Sidama.
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. 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.
The Nubian languages are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. In the past, Nubian languages were spoken throughout much of Sudan, but as a result of Arabization they are today mostly limited to the Nile Valley between Aswan and Al Dabbah. In the 1956 Census of Sudan there were 167,831 speakers of Nubian languages. Nubian is not to be confused with the various Nuba languages spoken in villages in the Nuba mountains and Darfur.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization. In the southern valley of Egypt, Nubians differ culturally and ethnically from Egyptians, although they intermarried with members of other ethnic groups, especially Arabs. They speak Nubian languages as a mother tongue, part of the Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, and Arabic as a second language.
Tama, or Tamongobo, is the primary language spoken by the Tama people in Ouaddai, eastern Chad and in Darfur, western Sudan. It is a Taman language which belongs to the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Miisiirii is often considered a dialect, though it is not particularly close.
Lower Nubia is the northernmost part of Nubia, roughly contiguous with the modern Lake Nasser, which submerged the historical region in the 1960s with the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Many ancient Lower Nubian monuments, and all its modern population, were relocated as part of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia; Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological site which was neither relocated nor submerged. The intensive archaeological work conducted prior to the flooding means that the history of the area is much better known than that of Upper Nubia. According to David Wengrow, the A-Group Nubian polity of the late 4th millenninum BCE is poorly understood since most of the archaeological remains are submerged underneath Lake Nasser.
In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania.
The Mararit language is a Taman language of the Eastern Sudanic branch spoken in eastern Chad and western Sudan. There are two dialects, Ibiri and Abou Charib, which Blench (2006) counts as distinct languages. The majority speak the Abou Charib dialect. Mararit is reportedly not mutually intelligible with Tama and Sungor despite being part of the same Taman language group.
Sungor is an Eastern Sudanic language of eastern Chad and western Sudan and a member of the Taman branch. It is closely related to Tama with some researchers speaking of a Tama-Assangori continuum.
The Tunjur people are a Sunni Muslim ethnic group living in eastern Chad and western Sudan. In the 21st century, their numbers have been estimated at 175,000 people.
The Nara (Nera) or Barea (Barya) language is spoken by the Nara people in an area just to the north of Barentu in the Gash-Barka Region of western Eritrea. The language is often confused with Kunama, which is at best only distantly related.
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 Nyima languages are a pair of languages of Sudan spoken by the Nyimang of the Nuba Mountains that appear to be most closely related to the Eastern Sudanic languages, especially the northern group of Nubian, Nara and Tama.
Nyimang, also known as Ama, is an East Sudanic language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan by the Nyimang people who are a sub-group of the Nuba people.
Afitti is a language spoken on the eastern side of Jebel el-Dair, a solitary rock formation in the North Kordofan province of Sudan. Although the term ‘Dinik’ can be used to designate the language regardless of cultural affiliation, people in the villages of the region readily recognize the terms ‘Ditti’ and ‘Afitti.’ There are approximately 4,000 speakers of the Afitti language and its closest linguistic neighbor is the Nyimang language, spoken west of Jebel el-Dair in the Nuba Mountains of the South Kordofan province of Sudan.
The Hill Nubian languages, also called Kordofan Nubian, are a dialect continuum of Nubian languages spoken by the Hill Nubians in the northern Nuba Mountains of Sudan.
The Burun languages are a branch of the Nilotic languages. They include:
Miisiirii is a language of western Sudan and Chad, spoken by the Mileri community of Jebel Mun in Darfur who claim a dubious Messiria Arab descent, they also have a few speakers scattered in Chad.
Laka or Lau is a Central Sudanic language spoken in Nigeria. It is most closely related to Kabba Laka of Chad. The Hausa refer to the Laka people of Lau as Lakawa. The language was only recently documented in the mid-2010s, and had been previously misclassified as a Mbum language along with Lau.
Claude Rilly is a French linguist, Egyptologist, and archaeologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research who primarily specializes in Meroitic and Nilo-Saharan languages. He is professor at the École pratique des hautes études since 2019.