Masalit language explained

Masalit
Nativename:	Kanaa Masarak
States:	Chad, Sudan
Region:	Ouaddaï, Sila (Chad), West Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan),
Ethnicity:	Masalit
Date:	2019–2022
Ref:	e27
Script:	Latin
Familycolor:	Nilo-Saharan
Fam2:	Maban
Fam3:	Masalit languages
Lc1:	mls
Ld1:	Masalit
Lc2:	mdg
Ld2:	Massalat
Glotto:	nucl1440
Glottoname:	Nuclear Masalit
Glottorefname:	Masalit
Glotto2:	mass1262
Glottoname2:	Massalat
Elp:	577
Elpname:	Massalat

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara;) 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 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.

Phonology

Vowels

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

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop/ Affricate		p	t	t͡ʃ	k	(ʔ)
		b	d	d͡ʒ	g
		ᵐb	ⁿd	ⁿd͡ʒ	ᵑɡ
Fricative		f	s	ʃ	(x)	h
		v	(z)
Trill			r
Lateral			l
Approximant				ɥ	w
				j

• It has been stated that occasional click sounds pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
• Sounds pronounced as //r, l, m, k// can occur as geminated pronounced as /[rː, lː, mː, kː]/.
• Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
• pronounced as //z, x// only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
• pronounced as /link/ is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
• Sounds pronounced as //p, ɥ, v// only occur in word-initial position.^[1]

Sociolects

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.

External links

• The Lost Languages, Found in New York - NYTimes.com

Further reading

• Web site: Abdo . Alsadig Adam . Contrastive analysis between Masalit and English language . Department of Linguistics . University of Khartoum . https://web.archive.org/web/20160305170253/http://khartoumspace.uofk.edu:8080/bitstream/handle/123456789/2274/Contrastive%20Analysis%20Between%20Masalit%20and%20English%20Language.pdf?sequence=1 . 5 March 2016 . November 2013.
• Edgar . John . Masalit stories . African Languages and Cultures . January 1990 . 3 . 2 . 127–148 . 10.1080/09544169008717716 . 1771718 . Taylor & Francis.
• Jakobi . Angelika . 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 . 1991 . 86 . 4–6 . 599–601 . de . Nomos Verlag . 40463695.

Notes and References

1. Book: Edgar, John. A Masalit Grammar: With Notes on other languages of Darfur and Wadai. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. 1989.