The Cangin languages are spoken by 200,000 people (as of 2007) in a small area east of
Dakar
Dakar ( ; ; wo, Ndakaaru) (from daqaar ''tamarind''), is the capital and largest city of Senegal. The city of Dakar proper has a population of 1,030,594, whereas the population of the Dakar metropolitan area is estimated at 3.94 million in 2 ...
,
Senegal
Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤠(Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤠...
. They are the languages spoken by the
Serer people
The Serer people are a West African ethnoreligious group. who do not speak the
Serer language
Serer, often broken into differing regional dialects such as Serer-Sine and Serer saloum, is a language of the kingdoms of Sine and Saloum branch of Niger–Congo spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal and 30,000 in the Gambia as of 2009. It ...
(''Serer-Sine''). Because the people are ethnically Serer, the Cangin languages are commonly thought to be dialects of the Serer language. However, they are not closely related; Serer is closer to
Fulani
The Fula, Fulani, or Fulɓe people ( ff, Fulɓe, ; french: Peul, links=no; ha, Fulani or Hilani; pt, Fula, links=no; wo, Pël; bm, Fulaw) are one of the largest ethnic groups in the Sahel and West Africa, widely dispersed across the region. ...
than it is to Cangin.
Languages
The Cangin languages are:
Lehar and Noon are particularly close, as are Ndut and Palor, though not quite to the point of easy intelligibility. Safen is transparently closer to Lehar–Noon than to Palor–Ndut.
Reconstruction
Merrill (2018: 451) reconstructs Proto-Cangin as follows.
[Merrill, John Thomas Mayfield. 2018. ]
The Historical Origin of Consonant Mutation in the Atlantic Languages
'. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
See also
*
Serer language
Serer, often broken into differing regional dialects such as Serer-Sine and Serer saloum, is a language of the kingdoms of Sine and Saloum branch of Niger–Congo spoken by 1.2 million people in Senegal and 30,000 in the Gambia as of 2009. It ...
*
List of Proto-Cangin reconstructions (Wiktionary)
Footnotes
References
*Walter Pichl, ''The Cangin Group: A Language Group in Northern Senegal'', Pittsburgh, PA : Institute of African Affairs, Duquesne University, Coll. African Reprint Series, 1966, vol. 20
*Guillaume Segerer & Florian Lionnet 2010
"'Isolates' in 'Atlantic'" ''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyon, Dec. 4
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cangin Languages
Languages of Senegal
Languages of the Gambia
Languages of Mauritania