Masalit language

Masalit
Kanaa Masarak
Native to	Chad, Sudan
Region	Ouaddaï, Sila (Chad), West Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan),
Ethnicity	Masalit
Native speakers	410,000 (2019–2022)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Maban Masalit languages Masalit
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mls – Masalit mdg – Massalat
Glottolog	nucl1440  Nuclear Masalit mass1262  Massalat
ELP	Massalat

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

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	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

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

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.

External links

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

Further reading

• 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.