Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; ) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West 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 can occur as geminated .
- Sounds /t, m, n, Ã
Â/ can occur as palatalized [tò, mò, nò, Ã
Âò] before front vowels.
- only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
- is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
- Sounds only occur in word-initial position.
Sociolects
The Masalit language has two sociolects:
- "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative 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
Further reading
External links