Masalit language

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Masalit
kana masara
Native to Sudan, Chad
Region Dar Masalit (Darfur)
Ethnicity Masalit people
Native speakers
410,000 (2006–2010)[1]
Nilo-Saharan?
  • Maban
    • Masalit languages
      • Masalit
Language codes
ISO 639-3 Either:
mls – Masalit
mdg – Massalat
Glottolog nucl1440  (Nuclear Masalit)[2]
mass1262  (Massalat)[3]

Masalit (autonym kana masara) is a Maban language spoken by the Masalit people in western Darfur. It has two sociolects: "heavy" Masalit, with a complicated agglutinative grammar, spoken by higher-ranking people and in the countryside, and "light", 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.

The Massalat moved west into Chad, and have almost entirely switched to Arabic. The ethnic population was 30,000 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers were reported in 1991.[1]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Masalit at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Massalat at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
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External links

Further Readings

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  • Edgar, J. (1990). Masalit stories. African Languages and Cultures, 3(2), 127-148.
  • Jakobi, A. (1991). Au Masali Grammar: With Notes on Other Languages of Darfur and Wadai. Anthropos, 86(4-6), 599-601.

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