Kanuri () is a

dialect continuum A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of Variety (linguistics), language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulat ...

spoken in

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 o ...

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesChad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

and

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

, as well as in small minorities in southern

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya bo ...

and by a diaspora in

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

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 Central Africa is a subregion of the African continent comprising various countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, ...

. It belongs to the Western Saharan subphylum of

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. T ...

. Kanuri is the language associated with the Kanem and Bornu empires that dominated 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, ...

region for a thousand years. The basic word order of Kanuri sentences is

subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...

. It is typologically unusual in simultaneously having

postposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s 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 In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...

; for example, "they" + "have eaten" → "they have eaten". Traditionally a local

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 ...

, its usage has declined in recent decades. Most first-language speakers speak

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 * ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

as a second language.

Geographic distribution

Kanuri is spoken mainly in lowlands of the

Chad Basin The Chad Basin is the largest endorheic basin in Africa, centered on Lake Chad. It has no outlet to the sea and contains large areas of semi-arid desert and savanna. The drainage basin is roughly coterminous with the sedimentary basin of the sam ...

, with speakers in

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesNigeria 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 o ...

and

Varieties

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

'' divides Kanuri into the following languages, while many linguists (e.g. Cyffer 1998) regard them as dialects of a single language. The first three are spoken by ethnic Kanuri and thought by them as dialects of their language. * Central Kanuri * Manga Kanuri * Tumari Kanuri * Bilma Kanuri (or Bilms) * Kanembu The variety attested in 17th century Qur'anic glosses is known as Old Kanembu. In the context of religious recitation and commentaries, a heavily archaizing descendant of this is still used, called Tarjumo.

Phonology

Consonants

* There may also exist prenasalized voiced stop consonant sounds /mb, nd, ŋɡ/, although it is not known whether they are considered phonemic. * The sound /p/ occurs mainly as an allophone of /b/, when following another voiceless plosive. It also may be in free alteration with /f/, however; it is still represented in the standard Kanuri orthography. * A voiceless fricative �occurs as an allophone of /f/ when preceding back vowels /o, u/. A voiced fricative �occurs as an allophone of /b/, when occurring in intervocalic positions. A voiced fricative �occurs as an allophone of /ɡ/, when occurring intervocalically between central vowels. * A retroflex lateral sound �is heard when /l/ is followed by /i/. * �occurs as an allophone of /n/ when preceding velar stop consonants. Often, the stop sounds are deleted or misheard, so just the nasal sound �is mainly heard.

Vowels

* �is heard as an allophone of /ə/.

Written Kanuri

Kanuri has been written using the

Ajami ''Ajam'' ( ar, عجم, ʿajam) is an Arabic word meaning mute, which today refers to someone whose mother tongue is not Arabic. During the Arab conquest of Persia, the term became a racial pejorative. In many languages, including Persian, Tur ...

Arabic script The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...

, mainly in religious or court contexts, for at least four hundred years. More recently, it is also sometimes written in a modified

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

. The Gospel of John published in 1965 was produced in Roman and Arabic script.

Alphabet

A standardized romanized orthography (known as the Standard Kanuri Orthography in Nigeria) was developed by the Kanuri Research Unit and the Kanuri Language Board. Its elaboration, based on the dialect of Maiduguri, was carried out by the Orthography Committee of the Kanuri Language Board, under the Chairmanship of Abba Sadiq, Waziri of Borno. It was officially approved by the Kanuri Language Board in

Maiduguri Maiduguri is the capital and the largest city of Borno State Borno State is a state in the North-East geopolitical zone of Nigeria, bordered by Yobe to the west, Gombe to the southwest, and Adamawa to the south while its eastern border form ...

, Nigeria, in 1975. Letters used : a b c d e ǝ f g h i j k l m n ny o p r ɍ s sh t u w y z.

Sources

* Norbert Cyffer & John P. Hutchison (eds.) ''Dictionary of the Kanuri Language (Publications in African languages and linguistics, 13)''. Foris Publications 1990. . * Norbert Cyffer, ''We Learn Kanuri'' (book and 2 audio cassettes), , Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: Köln 1993. * Norbert Cyffer, ''English-Kanuri Dictionary'', , Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: Köln 1994. * Norbert Cyffer, ''A Sketch of Kanuri''. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag: Köln 1998.
Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: kau

References

Sources

* Barth, Heinrich 1854. Schreiben an Prof. Lepsius uber die Beziehung der Kanori- und Teda-Sprachen. ''Zeitschrift für Erdkunde'', 2: 372–74, 384–87. * Bulakarima, S. Umara 1997. Survey of Kanuri dialects. in ''Advances in Kanuri Scholarship'', ed. N. Cyffer and T. Geider. Pp. 67–75. Cologne: Rudiger Koppe. * Chonai, Hassan 1998. ''Gruppa teda-kanuri (centraľnosaxarskaja sem’ja jazykov) i ee genetičeskie vzaimootnošenija (ėtimologičeskij i fonologičeskij aspekt).'' Moskva: PhD. Dissertation (Rossijskij gosudarstvennyj gumanitarnyj universitet). * Hutchison, John P. 1981. ''The Kanuri Language. A Reference Grammar''. Madison: University of Wisconsin. * Koelle, Sigismund Wilhelm 1854. ''Grammar of the Bornu or Kanuri Language''. London: Church Missionary Society. * Lange, Dierk 1972. Un vocabulaire kanuri de la fin du XVIIe siècle. '' Cahiers d'Études africaines'', 12(46): 277–290. * Lukas, Johannes 1937. ''A Study of the Kanuri Language. Grammar and Vocabulary''. London: Oxford University Press.

External links

Kanuri Vocabulary List
(from the World Loanword Database)
PanAfrican L10n page on KanuriDictionary of Manga Kanuri
{{Authority control Languages of Cameroon Languages of Chad Languages of Niger Languages of Nigeria Saharan languages Lake Chad Subject–object–verb languages