The Chadic languages form a branch of the

Afroasiatic language family The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

. They are spoken in parts of the

Sahel The Sahel (; ar, ساحل ' , "coast, shore") is a region in North Africa. It is defined as the ecoclimatic and biogeographic realm of transition between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian savanna to the south. Having a hot semi-arid cl ...

. They include 150 languages spoken across northern

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of G ...

, southern

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesChad, the Central African Republic, and northern Cameroon. The most widely spoken Chadic language is

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also ...

, a ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

'' of much of inland Eastern

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, ...

Composition

Paul Newman Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, race car driver, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, three ...

(1977) classified the languages into the four groups which have been accepted in all subsequent literature. Further subbranching, however, has not been as robust;

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and works ...

(2006), for example, only accepts the A/B bifurcation of East Chadic. Kujargé has been added from Blench (2008), who suggests Kujargé may have split off before the breakup of Proto-Chadic and then subsequently became influenced by East Chadic. Subsequent work by

Joseph Lovestrand Joseph is a common male given name, derived from the Hebrew Yosef (יוֹסֵף). "Joseph" is used, along with "Josef", mostly in English, French and partially German languages. This spelling is also found as a variant in the languages of the mo ...

argues strongly that Kujarge is a valid member of East Chadic. The placing of Luri as a primary split of West Chadic is erroneous. Bernard Caron (2004) shows that this language is South Bauchi and part of the Polci cluster. *

West Chadic The West Chadic languages of the Afro-Asiatic family are spoken principally in Niger and Nigeria. They include Hausa, the most populous Chadic language and a major language of West Africa. Languages The branches of West Chadic go either by na ...

. Two branches, which include :(A) the

, Ron, Bole, and

Angas languages The Angas, Angas–Sura, or Central West Chadic languages (also known as A.3 West Chadic) are a branch of West Chadic languages spoken in Plateau State, north-central Nigeria. Languages The Angas languages are:Blench, Roger. 2017Current research ...

; and :(B) the Bade,

Warji Warji is a Local Government Area of Bauchi State, Nigeria. Its headquarters is in the town of Warji. It has an area of 625 km and a population of 114,720 at the 2006 census. The postal code A postal code (also known locally in various ...

, and

Zaar languages The South Bauchi languages (also called the B.3 West Chadic or Barawa languages) are a branch of West Chadic languages that are spoken in Bauchi State and Plateau State, Nigeria. An extensive lexical survey of the South Bauchi languages had bee ...

. * Biu–Mandara (Central Chadic). Three branches, which include :(A) the Bura, Kamwe, and Bata languages, among other groups; :(B) the Buduma and Musgu languages; and :(C) Gidar * East Chadic. Two branches, which include :(A) the Tumak, Nancere, and Kera languages; and :(B) the Dangaléat, Mukulu, and Sokoro languages *

Masa ''Masa'' (or ''masa de maíz'') (; ) is a maize dough that comes from ground nixtamalized corn. It is used for making corn tortillas, ''gorditas'', ''tamales'', ''pupusas'', and many other Latin American dishes. It is dried and powdered into a ...

*? '' Kujargé'' Chadic Languages

Origin

Modern genetic studies of Northwestern Cameroonian Chadic-speaking populations have observed high frequencies of the

Y-Chromosome The Y chromosome is one of two sex chromosomes ( allosomes) in therian mammals, including humans, and many other animals. The other is the X chromosome. Y is normally the sex-determining chromosome in many species, since it is the presence or abs ...

Haplogroup R1b Haplogroup R1b (R-M343), previously known as Hg1 and Eu18, is a human Y-chromosome haplogroup. It is the most frequently occurring paternal lineage in Western Europe, as well as some parts of Russia (e.g. the Bashkirs) and pockets of Central ...

in these populations (the R1b-V88 variant). This paternal marker is common in parts of West Eurasia, but otherwise rare in Africa. Cruciani et al. (2010) thus proposed that the Proto-Chadic speakers during the mid- Holocene (~7,000 years ago) migrated from the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

to the Central

Sahara , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

, and from there settled in the

Lake Chad Lake Chad (french: Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Central Africa, which has varied in size over the centuries. According to the ''Global Resource Information Database'' of the United Nations Environment Programme, ...

Basin. However, a more recent study in 2018 found that haplogroup R1b-V88 entered Chad much more recently during "Baggarization" (the migration of

Baggara Arabs The Baggāra ( ar, البَقَّارَة "heifer herder") or Chadian Arabs are a nomadic confederation of people of mixed Arab and Arabized indigenous African ancestry, inhabiting a portion of the Sahel mainly between Lake Chad and the Nile riv ...

to the Sahel in the 17th century AD), finding no evidence of ancient Eurasian gene flow. Another study in 2018 had R1b-V88 arriving and spreading in the area of Lake Chad approximately 3720-3230 BCE. This is due to the Starlike nature of the spread of specific R1b-V88 subclades notably R-V1589 suggesting an origin point for the spread near Lake Chad.

Loanwords

Chadic languages contain many Nilo-Saharan loanwords from either the Songhay or

Maban Maban, mabain or mabanba is a material that is held to be magical in Australian Aboriginal mythology. It is the material from which the shamans and elders of indigenous Australia supposedly derive their magical powers. Among the Ngaanyatjarra ...

branches, pointing to early contact between Chadic and Nilo-Saharan speakers as Chadic was migrating west. Although

Adamawa languages The Adamawa languages are a putative family of 80–90 languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in central Africa, in Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Chad, spoken altogether by only one and a half million people (as of 19 ...

are spoken adjacently to Chadic languages, interaction between Chadic and Adamawa is limited.Blench, Roger. 2012. ''Linguistic evidence for the chronological stratification of populations South of Lake Chad''. Presentation for Mega-Tchad Colloquium in Naples, September 13–15, 2012.

Pronouns

Pronouns in Proto-Chadic, as compared to pronouns in Proto-Afroasiatic (Vossen & Dimmendaal 2020:351):Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. ''The Oxford Handbook of African Languages''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary in different Chadic branches listed in order from west to east, with reconstructions of other Afroasiatic branches also given for comparison:

Bibliography

* Caron, Bernard 2004. Le Luri: quelques notes sur une langue tchadique du Nigeria. In: Pascal Boyeldieu & Pierre Nougayrol (eds.), Langues et Cultures: Terrains d’Afrique. Hommages à France Cloarec-Heiss (Afrique et Langage 7). 193–201. Louvain-Paris: Peeters. * Lukas, Johannes (1936) 'The linguistic situation in the Lake Chad area in Central Africa.' ''Africa'', 9, 332–349. * Lukas, Johannes. Zentralsudanische Studien, Hamburg 1937; * Newman, Paul and Ma, Roxana (1966) 'Comparative Chadic: phonology and lexicon.' ''Journal of African Languages'', 5, 218–251. * Newman, Paul (1977) 'Chadic classification and reconstructions.' ''Afroasiatic Linguistics'' 5, 1, 1–42. * Newman, Paul (1978) 'Chado-Hamitic 'adieu': new thoughts on Chadic language classification', in Fronzaroli, Pelio (ed.), ''Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica Camito-Semitica''. Florence: Instituto de Linguistica e di Lingue Orientali, Università di Firenze, 389–397. * Newman, Paul (1980) ''The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic.'' Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden. * Herrmann Jungraithmayr, Kiyoshi Shimizu: ''Chadic lexical roots.'' Reimer, Berlin 1981. * Herrmann Jungraithmayr, Dymitr Ibriszimow: ''Chadic lexical roots.'' 2 volumes. Reimer, Berlin 1994 * Schuh, Russell (2003) 'Chadic overview', in M. Lionel Bender, Gabor Takacs, and David L. Appleyard (eds.), ''Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Studies in Memory of

Igor M. Diakonoff Igor Mikhailovich Diakonoff (occasionally spelled Diakonov, russian: link=no, И́горь Миха́йлович Дья́конов; 12 January 1915 – 2 May 1999) was a Russian historian, linguist, and translator and a renowned expert on th ...

'',

LINCOM Europa Orlando Francisco Pires Júnior (born 17 February 1984), commonly known as Lincom, is a Brazilian footballer. Club career Born in Camapuã, Mato Grosso do Sul, Lincom moved to Birigui, São Paulo at the age of two. After graduating with Intern ...

, 55–60. ;Data sets * Robert Forkel, & Tiago Tresoldi. (2019). lexibank/kraftchadic: Chadic Wordlists (Version v3.0) ata set Zenodo.

References

{{Authority control Afroasiatic languages