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
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, 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)  
    Massalat at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)  
  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.