The Katla languages are two to three closely related languages that form a small

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in hist ...

in the

Nuba Hills The Nuba Mountains ( ar, جبال النوبة), also referred to as the Nuba Hills, is an area located in South Kordofan, Sudan. The area is home to a group of indigenous ethnic groups known collectively as the Nuba peoples. In the Middle Ages ...

of Sudan. Part of an erstwhile

Kordofanian The Kordofanian languages are a geographic grouping of five language groups spoken in the Nuba Mountains of the Kurdufan, Sudan: Talodi–Heiban languages, Lafofa languages, Rashad languages, Katla languages and Kadu languages. The first four g ...

proposal, they are of uncertain position within the hypothetical Niger–Congo family. They do not share the characteristic morphology of Niger–Congo, such as the

noun-class In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some a ...

system. Thus

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 ...

classifies them as a divergent branch of Niger–Congo outside the Atlantic–Congo core. A similar situation holds for another Kordofanian family,

Rashad Rashad is a given name which may refer to: Surname: *Ahmad Rashad (born 1949), American football player and sportcaster *Ali Akbar Rashad (born 1955), Iranian philosopher and Islamic scholar *Isaiah Rashad (born 1991), American rapper *Phylicia Ras ...

; these are not closely related to Katla.

References

* Roger Blench. Unpublished
Kordofanian and Niger–Congo: new and revised lexical evidence
* Roger Blench, 2011
Should Kordofanian be split up?
Nuba Hills Conference, Leiden Language families Kordofanian languages {{Kordofanian-lang-stub

See also

References