Masalit (autonym ''Masala/Masara'', ) is a language spoken by the Masalit people in western 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

Consonants

* It has been stated that occasional click sounds �and �may occur, however; they are considered to be rare. * Sounds /r, l, m, k/ can occur as geminated ː, lː, mː, kː * Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized ʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲbefore front vowels. * /z, x/ only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin. * �is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels. * Sounds /p, ɥ, v/ only occur in word-initial position.

Sociolects

The Masalit language has two

sociolect In sociolinguistics, a sociolect is a form of language ( non-standard dialect, restricted register) or a set of lexical items used by a socioeconomic class, profession, an age group, or other social group. Sociolects involve both passive acqui ...

s: *"Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative lang ...

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

External links