Masalit (autonym ''Masala/Masara''; ) is a

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributari ...

language of the Maban language group spoken by the

Masalit people The Masalit ( Masalit: ''masala/masara''; ) are an ethnic group inhabiting western Sudan and eastern Chad. They speak the Masalit language. Overview The Masalit primarily live in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, though a few thousand al ...

Ouaddaï Region Ouaddaï may refer to: * Ouaddaï highlands, an area in eastern Chad along the border with Sudan * Ouaddaï Prefecture Ouaddaï may refer to: * Ouaddaï highlands, an area in eastern Chad along the border with Sudan * Ouaddaï Prefecture, a form ...

Chad Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North Africa, North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to Chad–Libya border, the north, Sudan to Chad–Sudan border, the east, the Central Afric ...

and

West Darfur West Darfur State ( Wilāyat Ḡarb Dārfūr), historically Dar Masalit (), is one of the states of Sudan, and one of five comprising the Darfur region. Prior to the creation of two new states in January 2012, it had an area of 79,460 km² ...

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

. Masalit, known as the ''Massalat'', moved west into central-eastern

. Their ethnic population in Chad was as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

* It has been stated that occasional click sounds and may occur, however; they are considered to be rare. * Sounds can occur as geminated . * Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized ʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲbefore front vowels. * only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin. * is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels. * Sounds only occur in word-initial position.

Sociolects

The Masalit language has two

sociolect In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language ( non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, age group, or other social group. Sociolects involve both passive acquisit ...

s: *"Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

grammar *"Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from

Sudanese Arabic Sudanese Arabic, also referred to as the Sudanese dialect (, ), Colloquial Sudanese ( ) or locally as Common Sudanese ( ) refers to the various related varieties of Arabic spoken in Sudan as well as parts of Egypt, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Sudanese ...

, the regional

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

and language of education.

References

External links