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Masalit language

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Masalit
Kanaa Masarak
Native toChad, Sudan
RegionOuaddaï, Sila (Chad), West Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan),
EthnicityMasalit
Native speakers
410,000 (2019–2022)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3Either:
mls – Masalit
mdg – Massalat
Glottolognucl1440  Nuclear Masalit
mass1262  Massalat
ELPMassalat

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; Arabic: ماساليت) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.

Masalit, known as the Massalat, moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was 30,000 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.[2]

Phonology

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Vowels

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Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Close-mid e ə o
Open-mid ɛ ʌ ɔ
Open a

Consonants

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Labial Dental/
Alveolar
Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Stop/
Affricate
voiceless p t t͡ʃ k (ʔ)
voiced b d d͡ʒ g
prenasal ᵐb ⁿd ⁿd͡ʒ ᵑɡ
Fricative voiceless f s ʃ (x) h
voiced v (z)
Trill r
Lateral l
Approximant labial ɥ w
central j
  • It has been stated that occasional click sounds [ǀ] and [ǃ] may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
  • Sounds /r, l, m, k/ can occur as geminated [rː, lː, mː, kː].
  • Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
  • /z, x/ only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
  • [ʔ] is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
  • Sounds /p, ɥ, v/ only occur in word-initial position.[3]

Sociolects

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The Masalit language has two sociolects:

  • "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative grammar
  • "Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from Sudanese Arabic, the regional lingua franca and language of education.

References

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  1. ^ Masalit at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
    Massalat at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Masalit language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  3. ^ Edgar, John (1989). A Masalit Grammar: With Notes on other languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
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Further reading

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  • Abdo, Alsadig Adam (November 2013). "Contrastive analysis between Masalit and English language" (PDF). Department of Linguistics. University of Khartoum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016.
  • Edgar, John (January 1990). "Masalit stories". African Languages and Cultures. 3 (2). Taylor & Francis: 127–148. doi:10.1080/09544169008717716. JSTOR 1771718.
  • Jakobi, Angelika (1991). "Edgar, John: A Masalit Grammar. With Notes on Other Languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989. 121 pp., map, tab., fig. (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika, 3) Preis: DM 59-". Anthropos (in German). 86 (4–6). Nomos Verlag: 599–601. JSTOR 40463695.