Kanuri Research Unit
   HOME
*



Kanuri People
The Kanuri people (Kanouri, Kanowri, also Yerwa, Baribari and several subgroup names) are an List of ethnic groups of Africa, African ethnic group living largely in the lands of the former Kanem Empire, Kanem and Bornu Empires in Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, Libya and Cameroon. Those generally termed Kanuri include several subgroups and dialect groups, some of whom identify as distinct from the Kanuri. Most trace their origins to ruling lineages of the medieval Kanem-Bornu Empire, and its client states or provinces. In contrast to the neighboring Toubou people, Toubou or Zaghawa people, Zaghawa pastoralists, Kanuri groups have traditionally been sedentary, engaging in farming, fishing the Chad Basin, and engaged in trade and salt processing. Background Kanuri peoples include several subgroups, and identify by different names in some regions. The Kanuri language was the major language of the Bornu Empire and remains a major language in southeastern Niger, northeastern Nigeria and north ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kanuri Language
Kanuri () is a dialect continuum spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, as well as in small minorities in southern Libya and by a diaspora in Sudan. Background At the turn of the 21st century, its two main dialects, Manga Kanuri and Yerwa Kanuri (also called Beriberi, which its speakers consider to be pejorative), were spoken by 9,700,000 people in Central Africa. It belongs to the Western Saharan subphylum of Nilo-Saharan. Kanuri is the language associated with the Kanem and Bornu empires that dominated the Lake Chad region for a thousand years. The basic word order of Kanuri sentences is subject–object–verb. It is typologically unusual in simultaneously having postpositions and post-nominal modifiers – for example, "Bintu's pot" would be expressed as ''nje Bintu-be'', "pot Bintu-of". Kanuri has three tones: high, low, and falling. It has an extensive system of consonantal lenition; for example, "they" + "have eaten" → "they have eaten". Traditionally ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]