Berti language

Not to be confused with Berta language.

Berti
Native to	Sudan
Region	North Darfur
Extinct	1990s?
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Saharan Eastern Berti
Language codes
ISO 639-3	byt
Glottolog	bert1249

Berti is an extinct Saharan language formerly spoken in northern Sudan, specifically in the Tagabo Hills, Darfur, and Kurdufan. Berti speakers migrated into the region with other Nilo-Saharan speakers, such as the Masalit and Daju, who were agriculturalists practicing varying degrees of animal husbandry. They settled in two separate areas: one north of Al-Fashir, while the other had continued eastward, settling in eastern Darfur and western Kurdufan by the nineteenth century. The two groups did not appear to share a common identity, the western group differing noticeably in its cultivation of gum arabic. By the 1990s, Sudanese Arabic had largely replaced Berti as a native language.

Sources

• Petráček, Karel 1965. Die Phonetik, Phonologie und Morphologie der Berti (-Siga) Sprache in Dar Fur. Archiv Orientální, 33 : 341-366.
• Petráček, Karel 1966. Die Morphologie der Berti (-Siga) Sprache in Dar Fur. Archiv Orientální, 34: 295-319.
• Petráček, Karel 1967. Phonologische Systeme der zentralsaharanischen Sprachen (konsonantische Phoneme). Archiv Orientální 35: 26-51.
• Petráček, Karel 1970. Phonologische Systeme der zentralsaharanischen Sprachen (vokalische Phoneme). In: Mélanges Marcel Cohen, réunis par David Cohen. 389-396. The Hague: Mouton,
• Petráček, Karel 1987. Berti or Sagato-a (Saharan) Vocabulary. Afrika und Übersee 70, 163-193.