Eastern Sudanic languages
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| Eastern Sudanic | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution: |
Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo (DRC) |
| Genetic classification: |
Nilo-Saharan Eastern Sudanic |
| Subdivisions: |
Astaboran (k languages)
Kir-Abbaian (n languages)
|
| ISO 639-5: | sdv |
The Eastern Sudanic languages are large family of Nilo-Saharan languages spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania. The Nilo-Saharan classification was first posited by Joseph Greenberg.
Nubian (and possibly Meroitic) gives Eastern Sudanic some of the earliest written attestations of African languages. However, the largest branch by far is Nilotic, spread by extensive and comparatively recent conquests throughout East Africa. Before the spread of Nilotic, Eastern Sudanic was centered in present-day Sudan. The name "East Sudanic" refers to the eastern part of the region of Sudan where the country of Sudan is located, and contrasts with Central Sudanic and West Sudanic (modern Mande, in the Niger-Congo family).
Lionel Bender (1980) proposes several Eastern Sudanic isoglosses (defining words), such as *kutuk "mouth", *(ko)TVS-(Vg) "three", and *ku-lug-ut or *kVl(t) "fish".
[edit] Internal classification
There are two recent classifications of East Sudanic languages. The one followed by other historical linguists is Bender 2000.
- Bender 2000
Bender assigns the languages into two branches, depending on whether the 1sg pronoun ("I") has a /k/ or an /n/:
| Eastern Sudanic |
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- Ehret 2001 [1989]
Ehret calls the family "Eastern Sahelian", and idiosyncratically adds the Kuliak languages and Berta, which Bender assigns to higher-level branches of Nilo-Saharan, and reassigns Nyima to the southern branch. No evidence has been published for any of these assignments.
| Eastern Sahelian |
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[edit] Sources
- Bender, M. Lionel. 2000. "Nilo-Saharan". In Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse, eds., African Languages: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
- Bender, M. Lionel. 1981. "Some Nilo-Saharan isoglosses". ed. Thilo Schadeberg, M. L. Bender, Nilo-Saharan: Proceedings of the First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, Sept. 8-10, 1980. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
- Ehret, Christopher. 2001. A historical-comparative reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. Köln: Rudiger Köppe.
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