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 Chari may refer to: Places * Chari River, in Central Africa * Chari-Baguirmi (disambiguation), in Chad * Chari Department, in Chad, one of three departments making up the region of Chari-Baguirmi * Moyen-Chari (disambiguation), in Chad * Chari ...

and

Nile The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest riv ...

rivers, including historic

Nubia Nubia () ( Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sud ...

, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , relig ...

Benin Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the nort ...

in the west; from

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 the east, Suda ...

to the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

in the centre; and from

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central

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

Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama, Kuliak, and Songhay) are found in the modern countries of

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 ...

and

South Sudan South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of th ...

, through which the Nile River flows. In his book ''

The Languages of Africa ''The Languages of Africa'' is a 1963 book of essays by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, in which the author sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today. It is a ...

'' (1963),

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contains the languages which are not included in the Niger–Congo, Afroasiatic or

Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in ...

groups. Although some linguists have referred to the phylum as "Greenberg's wastebasket", into which he placed all the otherwise unaffiliated non-

click languages Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the ''tut-tut'' (British spelling) or '' tsk! tsk!'' ( ...

of Africa, specialists in the field have accepted its reality since Greenberg's classification.Blench, Roger & Lameen Souag. m.s.
Saharan and Songhay form a branch of Nilo-Saharan
'. Its supporters accept that it is a challenging proposal to demonstrate but contend that it looks more promising the more work is done. Some of the constituent groups of Nilo-Saharan are estimated to predate the

African neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

. Thus, the unity of

Eastern Sudanic 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. N ...

is estimated to date to at least the 5th millennium BC. Nilo-Saharan genetic unity would necessarily be much older still and date to the late Upper Paleolithic. The earliest written language associated with the Nilo-Saharan family is Old Nubian, one of the oldest written African languages attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. This larger classification system is not accepted by all linguists, however. ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute f ...

'' (2013), for example, a publication of the

Max Planck Institute Max or MAX may refer to: Animals * Max (dog) (1983–2013), at one time purported to be the world's oldest living dog * Max (English Springer Spaniel), the first pet dog to win the PDSA Order of Merit (animal equivalent of OBE) * Max (gorilla) ...

in Germany, does not recognise the unity of the Nilo-Saharan family or even of the Eastern Sudanic branch; Georgiy Starostin (2016) likewise does not accept a relationship between the branches of Nilo-Saharan, though he leaves open the possibility that some of them may prove to be related to each other once the necessary reconstructive work is done. According to Güldemann (2018), "the current state of research is not sufficient to prove the Nilo-Saharan hypothesis."

Characteristics

The constituent families of Nilo-Saharan are quite diverse. One characteristic feature is a tripartite singulative–

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

–

plurative In linguistics, singulative number and collective number (abbreviated and ) are terms used when the grammatical number for multiple items is the unmarked form of a noun, and the noun is specially marked to indicate a single item. This is the ...

number system, which Blench (2010) believes is a result of a noun-classifier system in the

protolanguage In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatt ...

. The distribution of the families may reflect ancient watercourses in a green Sahara during the Neolithic Subpluvial, when the desert was more habitable than it is today.

Major languages

Within the Nilo-Saharan languages are a number of languages with at least a million speakers (most data from SIL's ''Ethnologue'' 16 (2009)). In descending order: * Luo (''Dholuo'', 4.4 million). ''Dholuo'' language of the Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, Kenya's third largest ethnicity after the Niger–Congo-speaking Agĩkũyũ and

Luhya Luhya or Abaluyia may refer to: * Luhya people * Luhya language Luhya (; also Luyia, Luhia or Luhiya) is a Bantu language of western Kenya. Dialects The various Luhya tribes speak several related languages and dialects, though some of them ar ...

). (The term "Luo" is also used for a wider group of languages which includes ''Dholuo''.) * Kanuri (4.0 million, all dialects; 4.7 million if Kanembu is included). The major ethnicity around

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 ...

. * Songhay (3.2 million all dialects, mostly Zarma). Spread along the Niger River in

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Ma ...

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana t ...

, and

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesSonghai Empire, including its former capital Gao and the well-known city of

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou; Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label=Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrativ ...

. * Teso (1.9 million). Related to Karamojong, Turkana, Toposa and Nyangatom *

Nubian Nubian may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Nubia, a region along the Nile river in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. *Nubian people *Nubian languages *Anglo-Nubian goat, a breed of goat * Nubian ibex * , several ships of the Britis ...

(1.7 million, all dialects). The language of

, extending today from southern

into northern

. Many Nubians have also migrated northwards to

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metr ...

since the building of the

Aswan Dam The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan ...

. * Lugbara (1.7 million, 2.2 if Aringa (Low Lugbara) is included). The major Central Sudanic language;

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...

and the

. *

Nandi–Markweta languages The Nandi language, or Kalenjin proper, are a dialect cluster of the Kalenjin branch of the Nilotic language family. In Kenya, where speakers make up 18% of the population, the name ''Kalenjin'', a Nandi expression meaning "I say (to you)", gaine ...

(''Kalenjin'', 1.6 million). Kenyan Rift Valley, Kapchorua Uganda. * Lango (1.5 million). A Luo language, one of the major languages of

. * Dinka (1.4 million). The major ethnicity of

. * Acholi (1.2 million). Another Luo language of

. * Nuer (1.1 million in 2011, significantly more today). The language of the Nuer, another numerous people from

and

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

. * Maasai (1.0 million). Spoken by the Maasai people of

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

and

, one of the most well-known African peoples internationally. * Ngambay (1.0 million with Laka). Central Sudanic, the principal language of southern

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 ...

. Some other important Nilo-Saharan languages under 1 million speakers: * Fur (500,000 in 1983, significantly more today). The eponymous language of

Darfur Darfur ( ; ar, دار فور, Dār Fūr, lit=Realm of the Fur) is a region of western Sudan. ''Dār'' is an Arabic word meaning "home f – the region was named Dardaju ( ar, دار داجو, Dār Dājū, links=no) while ruled by the Daju ...

Province in western

. * Tubu (350,000 to 400,000) One of the northernmost Nilo-Saharan languages, extending from

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 ...

into

. Most Tubu speakers live in Northern Chad close to the Tibesti Mountains. Tubu has two main varieties: the Daza language and the Teda language. The total for all speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages according to ''Ethnologue'' 16 is 38–39 million people. However, the data spans a range from ca. 1980 to 2005, with a weighted median at ca. 1990. Given population growth rates, the figure in 2010 might be half again higher, or about 60 million.

History of the proposal

The Saharan family (which includes Kanuri, Kanembu, the Tebu languages, and

Zaghawa Zaghawa may refer to: * Zaghawa people * Zaghawa language Zaghawa is a Saharan language spoken by the Zaghawa people of east-central Chad (in the Sahel) and northwestern Sudan (Darfur). The people who speak this language call it Beria, from ''B ...

) was recognized by Heinrich Barth in 1853, the Nilotic languages by Karl Richard Lepsius in 1880, the various constituent branches of Central Sudanic (but not the connection between them) by Friedrich Müller in 1889, and the Maban family by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes in 1907. The first inklings of a wider family came in 1912, when

Diedrich Westermann Diedrich Hermann Westermann (June 24, 1875 – May 31, 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only impl ...

included three of the (still independent) Central Sudanic families within Nilotic in a proposal he called ''Niloto-Sudanic''; this expanded Nilotic was in turn linked to Nubian, Kunama, and possibly Berta, essentially Greenberg's Macro-Sudanic (Chari–Nile) proposal of 1954. In 1920 G. W. Murray fleshed out the Eastern Sudanic languages when he grouped Nilotic, Nubian, Nera, Gaam, and Kunama. Carlo Conti Rossini made similar proposals in 1926, and in 1935 Westermann added Murle. In 1940 A. N. Tucker published evidence linking five of the six branches of Central Sudanic alongside his more explicit proposal for East Sudanic. In 1950 Greenberg retained Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic as separate families, but accepted Westermann's conclusions of four decades earlier in 1954 when he linked them together as ''Macro-Sudanic'' (later ''Chari–Nile'', from the

and

Watersheds). Greenberg's later contribution came in 1963, when he tied Chari–Nile to Songhai, Saharan, Maban, Fur, and Koman-Gumuz and coined the current name ''Nilo-Saharan'' for the resulting family. Lionel Bender noted that Chari–Nile was an artifact of the order of European contact with members of the family and did not reflect an exclusive relationship between these languages, and the group has been abandoned, with its constituents becoming primary branches of Nilo-Saharan—or, equivalently, Chari–Nile and Nilo-Saharan have merged, with the name ''Nilo-Saharan'' retained. When it was realized that the Kadu languages were not Niger–Congo, they were commonly assumed to therefore be Nilo-Saharan, but this remains somewhat controversial. Progress has been made since Greenberg established the plausibility of the family. Koman and Gumuz remain poorly attested and are difficult to work with, while arguments continue over the inclusion of Songhai. Blench (2010) believes that the distribution of Nilo-Saharan reflects the waterways of the

wet Sahara The African humid period (AHP) (also known by other names) is a climate period in Africa during the late Pleistocene and Holocene geologic epochs, when northern Africa was wetter than today. The covering of much of the Sahara desert by grasses, ...

12,000 years ago, and that the protolanguage had noun classifiers, which today are reflected in a diverse range of prefixes, suffixes, and number marking.

Internal relationships

Dimmendaal (2008) notes that Greenberg (1963) based his conclusion on strong evidence and that the proposal as a whole has become more convincing in the decades since. Mikkola (1999) reviewed Greenberg's evidence and found it convincing. Roger Blench notes morphological similarities in all putative branches, which leads him to believe that the family is likely to be valid. Koman and Gumuz are poorly known and have been difficult to evaluate until recently. Songhay is markedly divergent, in part due to massive influence from the Mande languages. Also problematic are the Kuliak languages, which are spoken by hunter-gatherers and appear to retain a non-Nilo-Saharan core; Blench believes they might have been similar to Hadza language, Hadza or Dahalo language, Dahalo and shifted incompletely to Nilo-Saharan. Anbessa Tefera and Peter Unseth consider the poorly attested Shabo language to be Nilo-Saharan, though unclassified within the family due to lack of data; Dimmendaal and Blench, based on a more complete description, consider it to be a language isolate on current evidence. Proposals have sometimes been made to add Mande languages, Mande (usually included in Niger–Congo), largely due to its many noteworthy similarities with Songhay rather than with Nilo-Saharan as a whole, however this relationship is more likely due to a close relationship between Songhay and Mande many thousands of years ago in the early days of Nilo-Saharan, so the relationship is probably more one of ancient contact than a genetic link. The extinct Meroitic language of ancient Kingdom of Kush, Kush has been accepted by linguists such as Rille, Dimmendaal, and Blench as Nilo-Saharan, though others argue for an Afroasiatic affiliation. It is poorly attested. There is little doubt that the constituent families of Nilo-Saharan—of which only Eastern Sudanic languages, Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic languages, Central Sudanic show much internal diversity—are valid groups. However, there have been several conflicting classifications in grouping them together. Each of the proposed higher-order groups has been rejected by other researchers: Greenberg's Chari–Nile by Bender and Blench, and Bender's Core Nilo-Saharan by Dimmendaal and Blench. What remains are eight (Dimmendaal) to twelve (Bender) constituent families of no consensus arrangement.

Greenberg 1963

, in ''

'', set up the family with the following branches. The Chari–Nile core are the connections that had been suggested by previous researchers. Gumuz was not recognized as distinct from neighbouring Koman; it was separated out (forming "Komuz") by Bender (1989).

Bender 1989, 1991

Lionel Bender came up with a classification which expanded upon and revised that of Greenberg. He considered Fur and Maban to constitute a Fur–Maban languages, Fur–Maban branch, added Kadu languages, Kadu to Nilo-Saharan, removed Kuliak from Eastern Sudanic, removed Gumuz from Koman (but left it as a sister node), and chose to posit Kunama as an independent branch of the family. By 1991 he had added more detail to the tree, dividing Chari–Nile into nested clades, including a Core group in which Berta languages, Berta was considered divergent, and coordinating Fur–Maban as a sister clade to Chari–Nile. Bender revised his model of Nilo-Saharan again in 1996, at which point he split Koman and Gumuz into completely separate branches of Core Nilo-Saharan.

Ehret 1989

Christopher Ehret came up with a novel classification of Nilo-Saharan as a preliminary part of his then-ongoing research into the macrofamily. His evidence for the classification was not fully published until much later (see #Ehret 2001, Ehret 2001 below), and so it did not attain the same level of acclaim as competing proposals, namely those of Bender and Blench.

Bender 2000

By 2000 Bender had entirely abandoned the Chari–Nile and Komuz branches. He also added Kunama back to the "Satellite–Core" group and simplified the subdivisions therein. He retracted the inclusion of Shabo language, Shabo, stating that it could not yet be adequately classified but might prove to be Nilo-Saharan once sufficient research has been done. This tentative and somewhat conservative classification held as a sort of standard for the next decade.

Ehret 2001

Ehret's updated classification was published in his book ''A Historical–Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan'' (2001).Ehret (2001) This model is notable in that it consists of two primary branches: Gumuz–Koman, and a ''Sudanic'' group containing the rest of the families (see ''Sudanic languages#Nilo-Saharan, Sudanic languages § Nilo-Saharan'' for more detail). Also, unusually, Songhay is well-nested within a core group and coordinate with Maban in a "Western Sahelian" clade, and Kadu is not included in Nilo-Saharan. Note that "Koman" in this classification is equivalent to Komuz languages, Komuz, i.e. a family with Gumuz and Koman as primary branches, and Ehret renames the traditional Koman group as "Western Koman".

Blench 2006

Niger-Saharan, a language macrofamily linking the Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan phyla, was proposed by w:Roger Blench, Blench (2006). It is highly controversial and not accepted by mainstream linguistics. Blench's (2006) internal classification of the Niger-Saharan macrophylum is as follows. *Proto-Niger-Saharan ** Songhay, Saharan languages, Saharan, Maban languages, Maba, Fur languages, Fur, Kuliak languages, Kuliak, Berta language, Berta, Kunama language, Kunama, Komuz languages, Komuz, Shabo language, Shabo **Kado-Sudanic ***Kadu languages, Kado (Kadugli-Krongo) ***Niger-Sudanic ****East Sudanic languages, East Sudanic ****Niger-Central Sudanic *****Central Sudanic languages, Central Sudanic *****Niger-Congo languages, Niger-Congo According to Blench (2006), typological features common to both Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan include: *Phonology: ATR vowel harmony and the labial-velars /kp/ and /gb/ *Noun-class affixes: e.g., ''ma''- affix for mass nouns in Nilo-Saharan *Verbal extensions and plural verbs

Blench 2010

With a better understanding of Nilo-Saharan classifiers, and the affixes or number marking they have developed into in various branches, Blench believes that all of the families postulated as Nilo-Saharan belong together. He proposes the following tentative internal classification, with Songhai closest to Saharan, a relationship that had not previously been suggested: ? Mimi of Decorse

Blench 2015

By 2015, and again in 2017, Blench had refined the subclassification of this model, linking Maban with Fur, Kadu with Eastern Sudanic, and Kuliak with the node that contained them, for the following structure: Blench (2021) concludes that Maban may be close to Eastern Sudanic.

Starostin (2016)

Georgiy Starostin (2016), using lexicostatistics based on Swadesh lists, is more inclusive than ''Glottolog'', and in addition finds probable and possible links between the families that will require reconstruction of the proto-languages for confirmation. Starostin also does not consider Greenberg's Nilo-Saharan to be a valid, coherent clade. In addition to the families listed in ''Glottolog'' (previous section), Starostin considers the following to be established: *Northern Eastern Sudanic languages, Northern "K" Eastern Sudanic or "NNT" (Nubian, Nara, and Tama; see below for Nyima) *Southern Eastern Sudanic languages, Southern "N" Eastern Sudanic (Surmic, Temein, Jebel, Daju, Nilotic), though their exact relationships to each other remain obscure *Central Sudanic languages, Central Sudanic (including Birri language, Birri and Kresh languages, Kresh–Aja, which may prove to be closest to each other) * Koman (including Gule) A relationship of Nyima languages, Nyima with Nubian, Nara, and Tama (NNT) is considered "highly likely" and close enough that proper comparative work should be able to demonstrate the connection if it's valid, though it would fall outside NNT proper (see Eastern Sudanic languages). Other units that are "highly likely" to eventually prove to be valid families are: *East Sudanic languages, East Sudanic as a whole *Central Sudanic – Kadu (Central Sudanic + Kadu languages, Kadugli–Krongo) *Maba–Kunama (Maban languages, Maban + Kunama) *Komuz languages, Komuz (Koman + Gumuz) In summary, at this level of certainty, "Nilo-Saharan" constitutes ten distinct and separate language families: Eastern Sudanic, Central Sudanic – Kadu, Maba–Kunama, Komuz, Saharan, Songhai, Kuliak, Fur, Berta, and Shabo. Possible further "deep" connections, which cannot be evaluated until the proper comparative work on the constituent branches has been completed, are: *Eastern Sudanic + Fur + Berta *Central Sudanic – Kadu + Maba–Kunama There are faint suggestions that Eastern and Central Sudanic may be related (essentially the old Chari–Nile clade), though that possibility is "unexplorable under current conditions" and could be complicated if Niger–Congo were added to the comparison. Starostin finds no evidence that the Komuz, Kuliak, Saharan, Songhai, or Shabo languages are related to any of the other Nilo-Saharan languages. Mimi-D and Meroitic language, Meroitic were not considered, though Starostin had previously proposed that Mimi-D was also an isolate despite its slight similarity to Central Sudanic. In a follow up study published in 2017, Starostin reiterated his previous points as well as explicitly accepting a genetic relationship between Macro-East Sudanic and Macro-Central Sudanic. Starostin names this proposal "Macro-Sudanic". The classification is as follows. * Macro-Sudanic macrofamily ** Macro-Central Sudanic family *** Central Sudanic languages, Central Sudanic family **** Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi (West-Central Sudanic branch) **** Kresh languages, Kresh-Aja language (Nilo-Saharan), Aja-Birri language, Birri **** East-Central Sudanic branch ***** Mangbutu-Efe ***** Mangbetu-Asoa ***** Lendu-Ngiti ***** Moru-Madi *** Krongo-Kadugli (Kadu) group *** Maban languages, Maba group ** Macro-Eastern Sudanic family ***

family **** Northeast Sudanic languages, Northeast Sudanic family *****

group ***** Taman languages, Tama group ***** Nara language ***** Nyimang-Afitti Group **** Southeast Sudanic languages, Southeast Sudanic family ***** Surmic languages (Southern Surmic + Northern Surmic / Majang language, Majang branches) ***** Nilotic languages (Western, Eastern, Southern branches) ***** Eastern Jebel languages, Jebel group ***** Temein languages, Temein group ***** Daju languages, Daju group *** Berta language, Berta group *** Fur languages, Fur-Amdang group ** Kunama languages, Kunama-Ilit group * Koman-Gumuz ("Komuz languages, Komuz") family ** Koman family *** "Narrow Koman" group *** Gule language, Gule (Anej) language ** Gumuz languages (group) * Saharan languages, Saharan family ** Western Saharan group (Kanuri-Kanembu + Teda-Dazaga) ** Eastern Saharan group (Zaghawa + Berti) * Kuliak languages, Kuliak group * Songhay group * Shabo language (Mikeyir) Starostin (2017) finds significant lexical similarities between Kadu and Central Sudanic, while some lexical similarities also shared by Central Sudanic with Fur-Amdang, Berta, and Eastern Sudanic to a lesser extent.

Dimmendaal 2016, 2019

Gerrit J. Dimmendaal suggests the following subclassification of Nilo-Saharan: Dimmendaal et al. consider the evidence for the inclusion of Kadu languages, Kadu and Songhay too weak to draw any conclusions at present, whereas there is some evidence that Koman and Gumuz belong together and may be Nilo-Saharan. The large Northeastern division is based on several typological markers: * tolerance of complex syllable structure * higher amount of both inflectional and derivational morphology, including the presence of case (linguistics), cases * verb-final (SOV or OSV) word order * coverb + light verb constructions * converbs

''Glottolog'' 4.0 (2019)

In summarizing the literature to date, Hammarström et al. in ''

'' do not accept that the following families are demonstrably related with current research: *Berta language, Berta *Central Sudanic languages, Central Sudanic (excluding Kresh-Aja languages, Kresh–Aja; Birri language, Birri also questionable) *Daju languages, Daju (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Eastern Jebel languages, Eastern Jebel (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Fur languages, Furan *Gule language, Gule * Gumuz *Kadugli-Krongo languages, Kadugli–Krongo * Koman (excluding Gule language, Gule) *Kresh-Aja languages, Kresh–Aja (putatively ''Central Sudanic'') *Kuliak languages, Kuliak *Kunama language, Kunama *Maban languages, Maban (including Mimi-N) *Mimi-Gaudefroy language, Mimi-Gaudefroy (Mimi-D) *Nara language, Nara (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Nilotic languages, Nilotic (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *

(putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Nyimang languages, Nyimang (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Saharan languages, Saharan *Shabo language, Shabo *Songhai languages, Songhai *Surmic languages, Surmic (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Taman languages, Tama (putatively ''East Sudanic'') *Temein languages, Temein (putatively ''East Sudanic'')

External relations

Proposals for the external relationships of Nilo-Saharan typically center on Niger–Congo: Gregersen (1972) grouped the two together as ''Kongo–Saharan''. However, Blench (2011) proposed that the similarities between Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan (specifically Atlantic–Congo and Central Sudanic) are due to contact, with the noun-class system of Niger–Congo developed from, or elaborated on the model of, the noun classifiers of Central Sudanic.

Phonology

Nilo-Saharan languages present great differences, being a highly diversified group. It has proven difficult to reconstruct many aspects of Proto-Nilo-Saharan. Two very different reconstructions of the proto-language have been proposed by Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret.

Bender's reconstruction

The consonant system reconstructed by Bender for Proto-Nilo-Saharan is: The phonemes correspond to coronal plosives, the phonetic details are difficult to specify, but clearly, they remain distinct from and supported by many phonetic correspondences (another author, C. Ehret, reconstructs for the coronal area the sound and which perhaps are closer to the phonetic detail of , see infra) Bender gave a list of about 350 cognates and discussed in depth the grouping and the phonological system proposed by Ch. Ehret. Blench (2000) compares both systems (Bender's and Ehret's) and prefers the former because it is more secure and is based in more reliable data.Roger Blench, Blench, Roger M. (2000
"The classification of Nilo-Saharan"
(Afrika und Übersee 83). p. 299. For example, Bender points out that there is a set of phonemes including implosive consonant, implosives , ejective consonant, ejectives and prenasal constants , but it seems that they can be reconstructed only for core groups (E, I, J, L) and the collateral group (C, D, F, G, H), but not for Proto-Nilo-Saharan.

Ehret's reconstruction

Christopher Ehret used a less clear methodology and proposed a maximalist phonemic system: Ehret's maximalist system has been criticized by Lionel Bender, Bender and Roger Blench, Blench. These authors state that the correspondences used by Ehret are not very clear and because of this many of the sounds in the table may only be allophonic variations.

Morphology

Dimmendaal (2016) cites the following morphological elements as stable across Nilo-Saharan: * Causative prefix: *ɪ- or *i- * Deverbal noun (abstract / Participle, participial / Agent noun, agent) prefix: *a- * Grammatical number, Number suffixes: *-i, *-in, *-k * Reflexive pronoun, Reflexive marker: *rʊ * Personal pronouns: first person singular *qa, second person singular *yi * Logophoric pronoun: *(y)ɛ * Deictic markers: singular *n, plural *k * Postpositions: Possession (linguistics), possessive *ne, locative *ta * Preposition: *kɪ * Negative verb: *kʊ

Comparative vocabulary

Sample basic vocabulary in different Nilo-Saharan branches: ''Note'': In table cells with slashes, the singular form is given before the slash, while the plural form follows the slash.

References

External links

Roger Blench: Nilo-Saharan

Nilo-Saharan list
(Blench 2012)
Map of Nilo-SaharanPopular Overview of Nilo-Saharan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nilo-Saharan Languages Nilo-Saharan languages, Proposed language families