The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) are a group of closely related

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

s centred on the middle stretches of the

Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through ...

in the

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...

n countries of

Mali Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesBenin Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the nort ...

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to ...

and

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. In particular, they are spoken in the cities of

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; french: Tombouctou; Koyra Chiini: ); tmh, label=Tuareg, script=Tfng, ⵜⵏⴱⴾⵜ, Tin Buqt a city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrativ ...

Niamey Niamey () is the capital and largest city of Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River, primarily situated on the east bank. Niamey's population was counted as 1,026,848 as of the 2012 census. As of 2017, population projections show the capital dis ...

and

Gao Gao , or Gawgaw/Kawkaw, is a city in Mali and the capital of the Gao Region. The city is located on the River Niger, east-southeast of Timbuktu on the left bank at the junction with the Tilemsi valley. For much of its history Gao was an impor ...

. They have been widely used as a '' lingua franca'' in that region ever since the era of the

Songhai Empire The Songhai Empire (also transliterated as Songhay) was a state that dominated the western Sahel/Sudan in the 15th and 16th century. At its peak, it was one of the largest states in African history. The state is known by its historiographical ...

. In

, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao (east of

) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education. Some Songhay languages have little to no

mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

between each other. For example,

Koyraboro Senni Koyraboro Senni (Koroboro Senni, Koyra Senni or Gao Senni) is a member of the Songhay languages of Mali and is spoken by some 400,000 people along the Niger River from the town of Gourma-Rharous, east of Timbuktu, through Bourem, Gao and Ansongo ...

, spoken in Gao, is unintelligible to speakers of Zarma in

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesEthnologue''. However,

Songhoyboro Ciine Songhoyboro Ciine or Songhay Ciiné ( or ) is an upriver dialect of the southern Songhay dialect of Niger. It is spoken mostly in the northwestern corner of Niger's Tillaberi region, an area known as Songhay: from Gorouol, a border town with M ...

, Zarma, and Dendi have high mutual intelligibility within Niger. For

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

s, a major point of interest in the Songhay languages has been the difficulty of determining their genetic affiliation; they are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan, as defined by

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on ...

in 1963, but this classification remains controversial. Linguist

Gerrit Dimmendaal Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal (born 1955) is a Dutch linguist and Africanist. His research interests focused mainly on the Nilo-Saharan languages.Gerrit Dimmendaal, Colleen Ahland & Angelika Jakobi (2019) "Linguistic features and typologies in languages ...

(2008) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family.

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and work ...

argues that the Songhay and

Saharan languages The Saharan languages are a small family of languages across parts of the eastern Sahara, extending from northwestern Darfur to southern Libya, north and central Chad, eastern Niger and northeastern Nigeria. Noted Saharan languages include Kanur ...

form a Songhay-Saharan branch with each other within the wider Nilo-Saharan linguistic phylum. Historically, the name ''Songhay'' was neither an ethnic nor a linguistic designation for all, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhai Empire which are the

Songhai proper The Songhai proper (Songhay, Sangwai or Sonrai) are an ethnic group in the northwestern corner of Niger's Tillaberi Region, an area historically known in the country as '' Songhai''. They are a subgroup of the broader Songhai group. Even thoug ...

. The term used by the natives to address the languages and people collectively is "Ayneha". Aside the Songhai proper, some speakers in Mali have also adopted the name Songhay as an ethnic designation, while other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves with other ethnic terms, such as Zarma (Djerma) or

Isawaghen Tasawaq (Tuareg name: ''Tesăwăq''), sometimes also called ''Ingelshi'', is a Northern Songhay language spoken by the ''Issawaghan'' or ''Ingalkoyyu'', a community surrounding the town of In-Gall in Niger.Michael J. Rueck; Niels ChristiansenNort ...

(Sawaq). A few precolonial poems and letters composed in Songhay and written in the Arabic script exist in Timbuktu. However, Songhay is currently written in the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

Varieties

Researchers classify the Songhay languages into two main branches; Southern and Northern. Southern Songhay is centered on the Niger River. Zarma ( Djerma), the most widely spoken Songhay language with two or three million speakers, is a major language of southwestern

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesNiamey Niamey () is the capital and largest city of Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River, primarily situated on the east bank. Niamey's population was counted as 1,026,848 as of the 2012 census. As of 2017, population projections show the capital dis ...

, with 400,000 speakers, is the language of the town of Gao, the seat of the old Songhai Empire. Koyra Chiini is spoken to its west. The much smaller Northern Songhay is a group of heavily Berber-influenced dialects spoken in the Sahara. Since the Berber influence extends beyond the lexicon into the inflectional morphology, the Northern Songhay languages are sometimes viewed as

mixed language A mixed language is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language. It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgin ...

Genetic affiliation

Diedrich Hermann Westermann, a missionary and linguist, hesitated between assigning it to Gur or considering it an isolate, and

Maurice Delafosse Maurice Delafosse (20 December 1870 – 13 November 1926) was a French ethnographer and colonial official who also worked in the field of the languages of Africa. In a review of his daughter's biography of him he was described as "one of the most o ...

grouped it with Mande. At present, Songhay is normally considered to be Nilo-Saharan, following

's 1963 reclassification of

African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Souther ...

; Greenberg's argument is based on about 70 claimed cognates, including

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not c ...

s. This proposal has been developed further by, in particular,

Lionel Bender Marvin Lionel Bender (August 18, 1934 – February 19, 2008) was an American linguist. Life Bender was born August 18, 1934, in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. He travelled throughout the world, particularly in Northeast Africa, and was an accompli ...

, who saw it as an independent subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.

notes that Songhay shares the defining singulative–plurative morphology typical of Nilo-Saharan languages. As of 2011, he believes that Songhay is closest to the neighboring

and is not divergent. However, a Nilo-Saharan classification is controversial. Greenberg's argument was subjected to serious criticism by Lacroix, who deemed only about 30 of Greenberg's claimed cognates acceptable, and moreover argued that these held mainly between Zarma and the

, thus leading one to suspect them of being

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...

s. Certain Songhay– Mande similarities have long been observed (at least since Westermann), and Mukarovsky (1966), Denis Creissels (1981) and Nicolaï (1977, 1984) investigated the possibility of a Mande relationship; Creissels made some 50 comparisons, including many body parts and morphological suffixes (such as the causative in ''-endi''), while Nicolaï claimed some 450 similar words as well as some conspicuous typological traits. However, Nicolaï eventually concluded that this approach was not adequate, and in 1990 proposed a distinctly novel hypothesis: that Songhay is a Berber-based

creole language A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

, restructured under Mande influence. In support of this he proposed 412 similarities, ranging all the way from basic vocabulary (''tasa'' "

liver The liver is a major organ only found in vertebrates which performs many essential biological functions such as detoxification of the organism, and the synthesis of proteins and biochemicals necessary for digestion and growth. In humans, it ...

") to obvious borrowings (''anzad'' "

violin The violin, sometimes known as a '' fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone ( string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument ( soprano) in the family in regu ...

", ''alkaadi'' "

qadi A qāḍī ( ar, قاضي, Qāḍī; otherwise transliterated as qazi, cadi, kadi, or kazi) is the magistrate or judge of a '' sharīʿa'' court, who also exercises extrajudicial functions such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and mino ...

".) Others, such as Gerrit Dimmendaal, were not convinced, and Nicolaï (2003) appears to consider the question of Songhay's origins still open, while arguing against Bender's proposed etymologies. Greenberg's morphological similarities with Nilo-Saharan include the personal pronouns ''ai'' (cf. Zaghawa ''ai''), 'I', ''ni'' (cf. Kanuri ''nyi''), 'you (sg.)', ''yer'' (e.g. Kanuri ''-ye''), 'we', ''wor'' (cf. Kanuri ''-wi''), 'you (pl.)'; relative and adjective formants ''-ma'' (e.g. Kanuri ''-ma'') and ''-ko'' (cf. Maba ''-ko''), a plural suffix ''-an'' (?), a hypothetical plural suffix ''-r'' (cf. Teso ''-r'') which he takes to appear in the pronouns ''yer'' and ''wor'', intransitive/passive ''-a'' (cf. Teso ''-o''). The most striking of the Mande similarities listed by Creissels are the third person pronouns ''a'' sg. (pan-Mande ''a''), ''i'' pl. (pan-Mande ''i'' or ''e''), the demonstratives ''wo'' "this" (cf. Manding ''o'', ''wo'') and ''no'' "there" (cf. Soninke ''no'', other Mande ''na''), the negative ''na'' (found in a couple of Manding dialects) and negative perfect ''mana'' (cf. Manding ''má'', ''máŋ''), the subjunctive ''ma'' (cf. Manding ''máa''), the copula ''ti'' (cf. Bisa ''ti'', Manding ''de/le''), the verbal connective ''ka'' (cf. Manding ''kà''), the suffixes ''-ri'' (resultative - cf. Mandinka ''-ri'', Bambara ''-li'' process nouns), ''-ncè'' (ethnonymic, cf. Soninke ''-nke'', Mandinka ''-nka''), ''-anta'' (ordinal, cf. Soninke ''-ndi'', Mandinka ''-njaŋ''...), ''-anta'' (resultative participle, cf. Soninke ''-nte''), ''-endi'' (causative, cf. Soninke, Mandinka ''-ndi''), and the postposition ''ra'' "in" (cf. Manding ''lá'', Soso ''ra''...) The Songhay languages are considered to be an independent family by Dimmendaal (2011), although he classifies Saharan as part of Nilo-Saharan.

Grammar

Songhay is mostly a tonal, SOV group of languages, an exception being the divergent Koyra Chiini of Timbuktu, which is non-tonal and uses SVO order. Songhay has a morpheme ''-ndi'' which marks either the causative or the agentless passive. Verbs can even take two instances of the morpheme, one for each meaning. Thus ''ŋa-ndi-ndi'' figuratively translates to " he ricewas made to be eaten y someone: causee y someone: causer.Shopen, T. & Konaré, M. 1970. "Sonrai Causatives and Passives: Transformational versus Lexical Derivations for Propositional Heads", ''Studies in African Linguistics'' 1.211–54. Cited in Dixon, R.M.W. (2000). "A Typology of Causatives: Form, Syntax, and Meaning". In Dixon, R.M.W. & Aikhenvald, Alexendra Y. Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 31.

Reconstruction of Proto-Songhay

Below are some Proto-Songhay reconstructions: Some Proto-Eastern Songhay reconstructions are:

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:

Bibliography

* Dimmendaal, Gerrit. 2008. Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent. ''Language and Linguistics Compass'' 2(5): 843''ff.''
Dupuis-Yakouba, Auguste
1917. ''Essai pratique de méthode pour l'étude de la langue songoï ou songaï ..'. Paris: Ernest Leroux. * Hunwick, John O.; Alida Jay Boye. 2008. ''The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu''. Thames & Hudson. * Nicolaï, Robert. 1981. ''Les dialectes du songhay: contribution à l'étude des changements linguistiques''. Paris: SELAF. 302 pp. * Nicolaï, Robert & Petr Zima. 1997. ''Songhay''. LINCOM-Europa. 52 pp. * Prost, R.P.A. ndré 1956. ''La langue sonay et ses dialectes''. Dakar: IFAN. Series: Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire; 47. 627 pp. Publisher and publication abbreviations: *CSLI = Center for the Study of Language and Information. *IFAN = Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (since renamed the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire). *SELAF = Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France. *''SUGIA'' = ''Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika'', journal published by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne (Köln). *Köppe = Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

On genetic affiliation

* Bender, M. Lionel. 1996. ''The Nilo-Saharan Languages: A Comparative Essay''. München: LINCOM-Europa. 253 pp * Roger Blench and Colleen Ahland, "The Classification of Gumuz and Koman Languages

presented at the ''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyons, December 4, 2010 * D. Creissels. 1981. "De la possibilité de rapprochements entre le songhay et les langues Niger–Congo (en particulier Mandé)." In Th. Schadeberg, M. L. Bender, eds., ''Nilo-Saharan : Proceedings of the First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, September 8–10'', pp. 185–199. Foris Publications. * Joseph Greenberg, Greenberg, Joseph, 1963. ''The Languages of Africa'' (International Journal of American Linguistics 29.1). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. * Lacroix, Pierre-Francis. 1971. "L'ensemble songhay-jerma: problèmes et thèmes de travail". In ''Acte du 8ème Congrès de la SLAO (Société Linguistique de l’Afrique Occidentale)'', Série H, Fasicule hors série, 87–100. Abidjan: Annales de l’Université d’Abidjan. * Mukarovsky, H. G. 1966. "Zur Stellung der Mandesprachen". ''Anthropos'', 61:679-88. * Nicolaï, Robert. 1977. "Sur l'appartenance du songhay". ''Annales de la faculté des lettres de Nice'', 28:129-145. * Nicolaï, Robert. 1984. ''Préliminaires à une étude sur l'origine du songhay: matériaux, problématique et hypothèses'', Berlin: D. Reimer. Series: Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde. Serie A, Afrika; 37. 163 pp * Nicolaï, Robert. 1990. ''Parentés linguistiques (à propos du songhay)''. Paris: CNRS. 209 pp * Nicolaï, Robert. 2003. ''La force des choses ou l'épreuve 'nilo-saharienne': questions sur les reconstructions archéologiques et l'évolution des langues''. SUGIA - Supplement 13. Köln: Köppe. 577 pp

References

External links

* Wictionaire, Dictionary Songhai Koyraboro Senni - French, > 3000 Words
Relative Clauses in TadaksahakSome verb morphology features in TadaksahakPanAfrican L10n page on Songhai & ZarmaLanguage and Culture Djerma
*Maps showing the Songhay languages o
Mali
an
Niger

Northern Songhay
- bibliography and brief description of this subfamily {{DEFAULTSORT:Songhay Languages Language families Languages of Benin Languages of Mali Languages of Niger