thumb|right|Linguistic map of the non-Arab peoples of Darfur, showing the extent of the Masalit language in Sudan.
Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; ) 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 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.
Phonology
Vowels
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!Front
!Central
!Back
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!Close
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!Close-mid
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!Open-mid
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!Open
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Consonants
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!Labial
!Dental/<br>Alveolar
!Palatal
!Velar
!Glottal
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! colspan="2" |Nasal
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! rowspan="3" |Stop/<br>Affricate
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! rowspan="2" |Fricative
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|()
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|()
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! colspan="2" |Trill
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! colspan="2" |Lateral
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! rowspan="2" |Approximant
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- It has been stated that occasional click sounds and may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
- Sounds can occur as geminated .
- Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
- only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
- is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
- Sounds only occur in word-initial position.
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
Further reading
External links
- The Lost Languages, Found in New York - NYTimes.com