Week 2: The Linguistic Tapestry

In order to understand the Nilo-Saharan proposal in full, one first must peer into the details. In this blog post, I’ve compiled a list of all the subfamilies generally attributed to the Nilo-Saharan Phylum, a list which has changed quite a bit since Greenberg’s initial proposal, expanding outwards from his initial six subfamilies.

Eastern Sudanic

Eastern Sudanic has the oldest documentation of any Nilo-Saharan subfamily, with Old Nubian being recorded in the Coptic alphabet as early as the 700s. Stretching from Egypt down to Tanzania, it is also the most widely spoken group within the Nilo-Saharan family, with the Nilotic branch within Eastern Sudanic making up the better half of that number. Though, being the largest family in the group, it is also the most controversial, with some linguists not only refusing to recognize Nilo-Saharan as unified, but also refusing to recognize the Eastern Sudanic subfamily. It is a family with a significant amount of diversity, though some of that can be attributed to admixture, with most of the differences following a geographic north-south dichotomy, creating a sort of spectrum of change as one travels further in either direction.

Central Sudanic

One of the largest branches within the Nilo-Saharan label, stretching from Uganda to Cameroon. Generally, modifiers follow nouns within these languages, except for modifiers which indicate possession, which instead precede the noun. Many Central Sudanic languages have the quite unique feature of advanced-tongue-root vowel harmony. Vowel harmony is a feature of many languages where a vowel is altered to maintain the flow of a sentence, sort of like how ‘a’ can become ‘an’ in English but with a vowel changing as opposed to a consonant. The advanced-tongue-root refers to a process in which one pushes forward the base of their tongue, expanding their pharyngeal cavity, in order to change the sound of a vowel.

Kunama

A small family in inland Eritrea, oftentimes grouped together with its larger neighbors in  Eastern Sudanic, especially due to its tendency to form coverb-plus-light-verb constructions, though the fact that this isn’t a feature present in the southern languages of Eastern Sudanic indicate that it may be an areal feature simply borrowed by Kunama and others.

Gumuz and Koman

Two language families that have often been grouped together, but are also often separated. Both are small and found on the border region between Sudan and Ethiopia. Gumuz is notable for its particularly large inventory of consonants, with the lowest number of consonants being 31. Koman has more variation in their consonant numbers, though the proposed proto-language only has 26 total. Both families are structured in “Subject-Verb-Object” order, and both families have the feature of deictic markers attached onto verbs that can indicate direction.

Kadu

A particularly disputed family in Sudan which is often grouped as a part of the Kordofanian family, which is further, tenuously grouped into the Niger-Congo family. 

Kreish and Sinyar

Two small language isolates located in the general area of the Central Sudanic branch which are poorly researched, but often grouped into the Nilo-Saharan phylum. More research is necessary to confirm their status

Shabo

Another language isolate, spoken by only about 400 people in Ethiopia, occasionally grouped with Nilo-Saharan but oftentimes kept separate due to a lack of research.

Fur

Consists of two languages spoken, in Western Sudan and Eastern Chad, historically spread and developed by the sultanate of Darfur. The Fur languages have the unique feature of incredibly common metathesis, meaning the changing of a word’s internal phonemic structure by switching the placement of consonants. This often happens on a long-term scale, like the Latin ‘parabola’ becoming the Spanish ‘palabra,’ but in Fur these changes can happen within a sentence due to grammar alone.

Maban

Maban acts as quite an important pillar in the sustainment of the Nilo-Saharan theory, as it shows a significant lexical similarity to Eastern Sudanic, as well as to the more tenuous branches of Fur, Saharan, and even Songhay. Maban is a rather western family, existing primarily in Chad, which does leave some to believe that the lexical similarities it holds with languages further west are simply due to its location.

Songhay

The Songhay languages maintain a similar base vocabulary throughout the group. They have been significantly influenced by Afro-Asiatic (Berber, Arabic, Hausa) and Niger-Congo (Gur, specifically Bariba). Songhay languages were used by the Songhay Empire, and were able to spread as a result. It also hosts many similarities with the Mande family–a group typically included in Niger-Congo but occasionally left independent–including an almost identical phonology in the proto-language, as well as notable similarities with the Saharan family. Songhay is often considered to be one of the most tenuous connections to Nilo-Saharan.

Saharan

A group of Languages spoken in Chad, Niger, and Nigeria whose largest language, Kanuri, has over nine million speakers, and was partially spread by the historic Kanem-Bornu empire and its successors. While it is often grouped into the Nilo-Saharan family, its internal connections are quite inconsistent, with Blench stating that it forms a subfamily with Songhay and Dimmendal stating that it forms a subfamily with Eastern Sudanic.

Kuliak

Kuliak appears to be a relatively isolated group, but one which has also borrowed up to 70% of its lexicon from neighboring Nilotic languages. It generally is not considered Nilotic, however, as the remainder of its vocabulary is quite unique, though the grammatical structures of the language are in line enough with the family for it to be considered Nilo-Saharan, though that too may have arisen from the Nilotic admixture.

Mimi of Decorse and Mimi of Nachtigal

Two distinct languages attested to exist in Chad with the name Mimi during the years 1900 and 1870 respectively. Neither language appears to exist in the modern day and all that was ever attested of them were simple lists of vocabulary. It is possible that the languages died out, that they are still spoken but unattainable by researchers, that they were improperly recorded, or that they were simply a hoax, as faking languages was a not uncommon practice in that era. Regardless, Greenberg still incorporated these languages into the Nilo-Saharan phylum. It should also be noted that Amdang, a Fur language, is occasionally referred to by the name Mimi, but does not show any similarity to the vocabulary lists provided by Decorse and Nachtigal.