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

Masalit people The Masalit (Masalit: ''masala/masara''; ar, ماساليت) are an ethnic group inhabiting western Sudan and eastern Chad. They speak the Masalit language Overview The Masalit primarily live in Geneina, the capital of west Darfur, a few thousand ...

in western Darfur, Sudan. Masalit, known as the ''Massalat'' moved west into central-eastern

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Repub ...

. 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 acquisi ...

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 Sudanese Arabic, also referred to as the Sudanese dialect (), Colloquial Sudanese () or locally as Common Sudanese () refers to the various related varieties of Arabic spoken in Sudan as well as parts of Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Chad. Sudan ...

, the regional lingua franca and language of education.

References

External links