Komuz Languages
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Komuz Languages
The Komuz languages are a proposed branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family which would include the Koman languages, the Gumuz languages and the Shabo language, all spoken in south-eastern Sudan and western Ethiopia. Nilo-Saharan specialists have vacillated on a genealogical relationship between the Koman and Gumuz languages, a relationship called Komuz. Greenberg (1963) had included Gumuz in the Koman language family. Bender (1989, 1991) classified them together in a distant relationship he called Komuz, but by 1996 he had reversed himself, though he kept both groups in core Nilo-Saharan. Dimmendaal (2008) kept them together, though expressed doubts over whether they belonged in Nilo-Saharan, later referring to Gumuz as an isolate (2011). Ahland (2010, 2012), on the basis of new Gumuz data, resurrected the hypothesis. Blench (2010) independently came to the same conclusion and suggested that the Shabo language might be a third, outlying branch. The classification of Shabo is d ...
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Sudan
Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the southeast, and South Sudan to the south. Sudan has a population of 50 million people as of 2024 and occupies 1,886,068 square kilometres (728,215 square miles), making it Africa's List of African countries by area, third-largest country by area and the third-largest by area in the Arab League. It was the largest country by area in Africa and the Arab League until the 2011 South Sudanese independence referendum, secession of South Sudan in 2011; since then both titles have been held by Algeria. Sudan's capital and most populous city is Khartoum. The area that is now Sudan witnessed the Khormusan ( 40000–16000 BC), Halfan culture ( 20500–17000 BC), Sebilian ( 13000–10000 BC), Qadan culture ( 15000–5000 BC), the war of Jebel ...
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Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, South Sudan to the west, and Sudan to the northwest. Ethiopia covers a land area of . , it has around 128 million inhabitants, making it the List of countries and dependencies by population, thirteenth-most populous country in the world, the List of African countries by population, second-most populous in Africa after Nigeria, and the most populous landlocked country on Earth. The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African Plate, African and Somali Plate, Somali tectonic plates. Early modern human, Anatomically modern humans emerged from modern-day Ethiopia and set out for the Near East and elsewhere in the Middle Paleolithi ...
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Koman Languages
The Koman languages are a small, close-knit family of languages located along the Ethiopia–Sudan border with about 50,000 speakers. They are conventionally classified as part of the Nilo-Saharan family. However, due to the paucity of evidence, many scholars treat it as an independent language family. Among scholars who do accept its inclusion within Nilo-Saharan, opinions vary as to their position within it. Koman languages in Ethiopia are in close contact with the Omotic Mao languages. In Ethiopia, some Koman-speaking groups also consider themselves to be ethnically Mao. Internal classification The Koman languages are: *Koman ** Uduk, or T’wampa, (formerly in South Sudan) — about 20,000 speakers, most at a large refugee camp at Bonga, near Gambela ** Kwama (Ethiopia) — about 15,000 speakers, mainly in Benishangul-Gumuz ** Komo (Sudan) — about 12,000 speakers mainly in An Nil al Azraq ** Opuuo (Opo), or Shita (Ethiopia) — spoken in 5 villages north of the ...
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Bʼaga Languages
The Bʼaga languages, also known as Gumuz, form a small language family spoken along the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. They have been tentatively classified as closest to the Koman languages within the Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan language family.Gerrit Dimmendaal, Colleen Ahland & Angelika Jakobi (2019) Linguistic features and typologies in languages commonly referred to as 'Nilo-Saharan', ''Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics'', p. 6–7 Languages There are four to five Bʼaga languages. Grammatical forms are distinct between Northern Gumuz and Southern Gumuz. Yaso language, Yaso is at least a divergent dialect, perhaps distinct enough to count as a separate language. Daatsʼiin language, Daatsʼiin, discovered in 2013, is closest to Southern Gumuz, while Kadallu language, Kadallu in Sudan is attested by only two short word lists. A comparative word list of Daatsʼiin, Northern Gumuz, and Southern Gumuz is available in Ahland & Kelly (2014). The internal classifi ...
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Shabo Language
(or preferably ''Chabu''; also called Mikeyir) is an endangered language and likely language isolate spoken by about 400 former hunter-gatherers in southwestern Ethiopia, in the eastern part of the South West Ethiopia Peoples' Region. It was first reported to be a separate language by Lionel Bender in 1977, based on data gathered by missionary Harvey Hoekstra. A grammar was published in 2015 (Kibebe 2015). Some early treatments classified it as a Nilo-Saharan language (Anbessa & Unseth 1989, Fleming 1991, Blench 2010), but more recent investigation (Kibebe 2015) found none of the grammatical features typical of Nilo-Saharan, and showed that the Nilo-Saharan vocabulary items are loans from Surmic languages (Dimmendaal to appear, Blench 2019). Demographics Shabo speakers live in three places in the Keficho Shekicho Zone: Anderaccha, Gecha, and Kaabo. As they shift from hunting and gathering to more settled agriculture and to working as laborers, many of its speakers are ...
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Nilo-Saharan
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama, Kuliak, and Songhay) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan, through which the Nile River flows. In his book '' The Languages of Africa'' (1963), Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contained all the languages that were not included in the ...
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Gumuz Languages
Gumuz may refer to: *the Gumuz language *the Gumuz people The Gumuz (also spelled Gumaz and Gumz) are an ethnic group speaking a Nilo-Saharan language inhabiting the Benishangul-Gumuz Region in western Ethiopia, as well as the Fazogli region in Sudan. They speak the Gumuz language, which belongs to the N ...
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Gumuz Language
Gumuz (also spelled Gumaz) is a dialect cluster spoken along the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. It has been tentatively classified within the Nilo-Saharan family. Most Ethiopian speakers live in Kamashi Zone and Metekel Zone of the Benishangul-Gumuz Region, although a group of 1,000 reportedly live outside the town of Welkite (Unseth 1989). The Sudanese speakers live in the area east of Er Roseires, around Famaka and Fazoglo on the Blue Nile, extending north along the border. Dimmendaal et al. (2019) suspect that the poorly attested varieties spoken along the river constitute a distinct language, Kadallu. Gerrit Dimmendaal, Colleen Ahland & Angelika Jakobi (2019) Linguistic features and typologies in languages commonly referred to as 'Nilo-Saharan', ''Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics'', p. 6–7 An early record of this language is a wordlist from the Mount Guba area compiled in February 1883 by Juan Maria Schuver. Varieties Varieties are not all mutually intelligi ...
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Automated Similarity Judgment Program
The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists for well over half of the world's languages. It is continuously being expanded. In addition to isolates and languages of demonstrated genealogical groups, the database includes pidgins, creoles, mixed languages, and constructed languages. Words of the database are transcribed into a simplified standard orthography (ASJPcode). The database has been used to estimate dates at which language families have diverged into daughter languages by a method related to but still different from glottochronology, to determine the homeland (Urheimat) of a proto-language, to investigate sound symbolism, to evaluate different phylogenetic methods, and several other purposes. ASJP is not widely accepted among historical linguists as an adequate method to est ...
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Lionel Bender (linguist)
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 accomplished chess player. Dr. Bender died of complications from a stroke and brain hemorrhage on February 19, 2008, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Career Bender wrote and co-wrote several books, publications and essays on the languages of Africa, particularly those spoken in Ethiopia and Sudan, and was a major contributor to Ethiopian Studies. He did extensive work on the Afro-Asiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic and Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan languages spoken locally. Together with J. Donald Bowen, Robert L. Cooper, and Charles A. Ferguson, Bender carried out the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in East Africa, funded by the Ford Foundation in 1968-1970. He later conducted other research sponsored by th ...
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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 works as a consultant. Career Blench is known for his wide-ranging interests and has made important contributions to African linguistics, Southeast Asian linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology, ethnobotany, and various other related fields. He has done significant research on the Niger–Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afroasiatic families, as well as the Arunachal languages. Additionally, Blench has published extensively on the relationship between linguistics and archaeology. Blench is currently engaged in a long-term project to document the languages of central Nigeria. He has also expressed concern about ranching in Nigeria. Blench collaborated with the late Professor Kay Williamson, who died in January 2005, and is now a trustee of the ...
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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 commonly referred to as 'Nilo-Saharan'", ''Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics'' He completed his studies (1973–1978) in African studies, Arabic studies, history, and comparative literature at Leiden University, and graduating with a doctorate in 1982. He has been Professor of African Studies at University of Cologne since 2000. Selected works * ''The Turkana language''. Dordrecht 1983, . * with Marco Last: ''Surmic languages and cultures''. Köln 1998, . * ''Coding participant marking. Construction types in twelve African languages''. Amsterdam 2009, . * ''Historical linguistics and the comparative study of African languages''. Amsterdam 2011, . * ''The Oxford Handbook of African Languages'' co-edited with Rainer Vossen Rainer V ...
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