Masalit language

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara, Arabic: ماساليت) is a language spoken by the Masalit people in western Darfur, Sudan.

Masalit
kana masalaka/masaraka
Native toSudan, Chad
RegionWest Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan), Ouaddaï Region (Chad)
EthnicityMasalit
Native speakers
440,000 (2011-2013)[1]
Nilo-Saharan?
  • Maban
    • Masalit languages
      • Masalit
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

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". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2018-09-14.
    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.

    Further reading
    • Abdo, Alsadig Adam (2013). "Contrastive Analysis Between Masalit and English Language" (PDF). (in Masalit and English). University of Khartoum, Sadan: unpublished. Retrieved 8 May 2015. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
    • 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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