Northwest Songhay:
28-663: Koyra may refer to: Koyra Chiini language , spoken in Mali Koyra language or Koore language , spoken in Ethiopia Koyra Upazila , in Khulna District , Bangladesh Koyra, West Bengal , a census town in Barasat I CD Block, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
56-525: A Core group in which Berta was considered divergent, and coordinating Fur–Maban as a sister clade to Chari–Nile. Songhay Saharan Kunama–Ilit Kuliak Fur Maban Moru–Mangbetu Sara–Bongo Berta Surmic – Nilotic Nubian , Nara , Taman Gumuz Koman (including Shabo) Kadugli–Krongo Bender revised his model of Nilo-Saharan again in 1996, at which point he split Koman and Gumuz into completely separate branches of Core Nilo-Saharan. Christopher Ehret came up with
84-499: A challenging proposal to demonstrate but contend that it looks more promising the more work is done. Some of the constituent groups of Nilo-Saharan are estimated to predate the African neolithic . For example, the unity of Eastern Sudanic is estimated to date to at least the 5th millennium BC. Nilo-Saharan genetic unity would thus be much older still and date to the late Upper Paleolithic . The earliest written language associated with
112-419: A classification which expanded upon and revised that of Greenberg. He considered Fur and Maban to constitute a Fur–Maban branch, added Kadu to Nilo-Saharan, removed Kuliak from Eastern Sudanic, removed Gumuz from Koman (but left it as a sister node), and chose to posit Kunama as an independent branch of the family. By 1991 he had added more detail to the tree, dividing Chari–Nile into nested clades, including
140-482: A novel classification of Nilo-Saharan as a preliminary part of his then-ongoing research into the macrofamily. His evidence for the classification was not fully published until much later (see Ehret 2001 below), and so it did not attain the same level of acclaim as competing proposals, namely those of Bender and Blench. By 2000 Bender had entirely abandoned the Chari–Nile and Komuz branches. He also added Kunama back to
168-425: A number of languages with at least a million speakers (most data from SIL's Ethnologue 16 (2009)). In descending order: Some other important Nilo-Saharan languages under 1 million speakers: The total for all speakers of Nilo-Saharan languages according to Ethnologue 16 is 38–39 million people. However, the data spans a range from ca. 1980 to 2005, with a weighted median at ca. 1990. Given population growth rates,
196-460: A relationship between the branches of Nilo-Saharan, though he leaves open the possibility that some of them may prove to be related to each other once the necessary reconstructive work is done. According to Güldemann (2018), "the current state of research is not sufficient to prove the Nilo-Saharan hypothesis." The constituent families of Nilo-Saharan are quite diverse. One characteristic feature
224-443: A whole, however this relationship is more likely due to a close relationship between Songhay and Mande many thousands of years ago in the early days of Nilo-Saharan, so the relationship is probably more one of ancient contact than a genetic link. The extinct Meroitic language of ancient Kush has been accepted by linguists such as Rille, Dimmendaal, and Blench as Nilo-Saharan, though others argue for an Afroasiatic affiliation. It
252-713: A wider family came in 1912, when Diedrich Westermann included three of the (still independent) Central Sudanic families within Nilotic in a proposal he called Niloto-Sudanic ; this expanded Nilotic was in turn linked to Nubian, Kunama, and possibly Berta, essentially Greenberg's Macro-Sudanic ( Chari–Nile ) proposal of 1954. In 1920 G. W. Murray fleshed out the Eastern Sudanic languages when he grouped Nilotic, Nubian, Nera , Gaam , and Kunama. Carlo Conti Rossini made similar proposals in 1926, and in 1935 Westermann added Murle . In 1940 A. N. Tucker published evidence linking five of
280-599: Is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama , Kuliak , and Songhay ) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan , through which the Nile River flows. In his book The Languages of Africa (1963), Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contained all
308-723: Is a member of the Songhay languages spoken in Mali by about 200,000 people (in 1999) along the Niger River in Timbuktu and upriver from it in the towns of Diré , Tonka , Goundam and Niafunké as well as in the Saharan town of Araouane to its north. In this area, Koyra Chiini is the dominant language and the lingua franca , although minorities speaking Hassaniya Arabic , Tamasheq and Fulfulde are found. Djenné Chiini [dʒɛnːɛ tʃiːni] ,
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#1732963515373336-405: Is a tripartite singulative–collective–plurative number system , which Blench (2010) believes is a result of a noun-classifier system in the protolanguage . The distribution of the families may reflect ancient watercourses in a green Sahara during the African humid period before the 4.2-kiloyear event , when the desert was more habitable than it is today. Within the Nilo-Saharan languages are
364-681: Is poorly attested. There is little doubt that the constituent families of Nilo-Saharan—of which only Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic show much internal diversity—are valid groups. However, there have been several conflicting classifications in grouping them together. Each of the proposed higher-order groups has been rejected by other researchers: Greenberg's Chari–Nile by Bender and Blench, and Bender's Core Nilo-Saharan by Dimmendaal and Blench. What remains are eight (Dimmendaal) to twelve (Bender) constituent families of no consensus arrangement. Joseph Greenberg , in The Languages of Africa , set up
392-596: The 1840 battle of Toya in which Tuaregs defeated a force from the Fula "Empire" which had its capital in Hamdullahi . This Mali -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This Nilo-Saharan languages –related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Nilo-Saharan languages The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in
420-571: The Nilo-Saharan family is Old Nubian , one of the oldest written African languages, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. This larger classification system is not accepted by all linguists, however. Glottolog (2013), for example, a publication of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, does not recognise the unity of the Nilo-Saharan family or even of the Eastern Sudanic branch; Georgiy Starostin (2016) likewise does not accept
448-404: The current name Nilo-Saharan for the resulting family. Lionel Bender noted that Chari–Nile was an artifact of the order of European contact with members of the family and did not reflect an exclusive relationship between these languages, and the group has been abandoned, with its constituents becoming primary branches of Nilo-Saharan—or, equivalently, Chari–Nile and Nilo-Saharan have merged, with
476-514: The dialect spoken in Djenné , is mutually comprehensible , but has noticeable differences, in particular two extra vowels ( /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ ) and syntactic differences related to focalisation . East of Timbuktu, Koyra Chiini gives way relatively abruptly to another Songhay language, Koyraboro Senni . Unlike most Songhai languages, Koyra Chiini has no phonemic tones and has subject–verb–object word order rather than subject–object–verb . It has changed
504-578: The distribution of Nilo-Saharan reflects the waterways of the wet Sahara 12,000 years ago, and that the protolanguage had noun classifiers , which today are reflected in a diverse range of prefixes, suffixes, and number marking. Dimmendaal (2008) notes that Greenberg (1963) based his conclusion on strong evidence and that the proposal as a whole has become more convincing in the decades since. Mikkola (1999) reviewed Greenberg's evidence and found it convincing. Roger Blench notes morphological similarities in all putative branches, which leads him to believe that
532-594: The family is likely to be valid. Koman and Gumuz are poorly known and have been difficult to evaluate until recently. Songhay is markedly divergent, in part due to massive influence from the Mande languages . Also problematic are the Kuliak languages , which are spoken by hunter-gatherers and appear to retain a non-Nilo-Saharan core; Blench believes they might have been similar to Hadza or Dahalo and shifted incompletely to Nilo-Saharan. Anbessa Tefera and Peter Unseth consider
560-458: The family with the following branches. The Chari–Nile core are the connections that had been suggested by previous researchers. Koman (including Gumuz) Saharan Songhay Fur Maban Central Sudanic Kunama Berta Eastern Sudanic (including Kuliak , Nubian and Nilotic ) Gumuz was not recognized as distinct from neighbouring Koman; it was separated out (forming "Komuz") by Bender (1989). Lionel Bender came up with
588-564: The figure in 2010 might be half again higher, or about 60 million. The Saharan family (which includes Kanuri , Kanembu , the Tebu languages , and Zaghawa ) was recognized by Heinrich Barth in 1853, the Nilotic languages by Karl Richard Lepsius in 1880, the various constituent branches of Central Sudanic (but not the connection between them) by Friedrich Müller in 1889, and the Maban family by Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes in 1907. The first inklings of
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#1732963515373616-454: The languages that were not included in the Niger–Congo , Afroasiatic or Khoisan families. Although some linguists have referred to the phylum as "Greenberg's wastebasket ", into which he placed all the otherwise unaffiliated non- click languages of Africa, other specialists in the field have accepted it as a working hypothesis since Greenberg's classification. Linguists accept that it is
644-490: The name Nilo-Saharan retained. When it was realized that the Kadu languages were not Niger–Congo, they were commonly assumed to therefore be Nilo-Saharan, but this remains somewhat controversial. Progress has been made since Greenberg established the plausibility of the family. Koman and Gumuz remain poorly attested and are difficult to work with, while arguments continue over the inclusion of Songhai. Blench (2010) believes that
672-640: The original Songhay z to j . All vowels have lengthened counterparts. Table below illustrates the Latin alphabet for Koyra Chiini in Mali, as standardized by "DNAFLA". Table below illustrates the Arabic (Ajami) alphabet for Koyra Chiini, based on UNESCO.BREDA report on standardization of Arabic script in published in 1987 in Bamako . Below is a sample text, a portion of a monologue recorded in Timbuktu in 1986. It describes
700-415: The poorly attested Shabo language to be Nilo-Saharan, though unclassified within the family due to lack of data; Dimmendaal and Blench, based on a more complete description, consider it to be a language isolate on current evidence. Proposals have sometimes been made to add Mande (usually included in Niger–Congo ), largely due to its many noteworthy similarities with Songhay rather than with Nilo-Saharan as
728-533: The six branches of Central Sudanic alongside his more explicit proposal for East Sudanic. In 1950 Greenberg retained Eastern Sudanic and Central Sudanic as separate families, but accepted Westermann's conclusions of four decades earlier in 1954 when he linked them together as Macro-Sudanic (later Chari–Nile , from the Chari and Nile Watersheds). Greenberg's later contribution came in 1963, when he tied Chari–Nile to Songhai, Saharan, Maban, Fur, and Koman-Gumuz and coined
756-567: The title Koyra . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Koyra&oldid=843138011 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Koyra Chiini language Eastern Songhay: Koyra Chiini ( [kojra tʃiːni] , figuratively "town language"), or Western Songhay ,
784-563: The upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia , north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan
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