Kordofanian languages

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Several Kordofanian languages are spoken in the Nuba hills of Kordofan, in Sudan. In 1963 they were grouped together with the Niger-Congo languages by Joseph Greenberg, forming the Niger-Kordofanian languages. The Kordofanian languages have not been shown to be more distantly related to Niger-Congo than some other branches, however, and today they are usually subsumed under Niger-Congo and considered one of the first families to branch off, along with Mande. The "Tumtum" or Kadu languages were formerly considered Kordofanian, but are now normally excluded (since Schadeberg 1981c), and widely seen as Nilo-Saharan. They are divided into four subgroups:

Heiban languages (also called Koalib, Koalib-Moro) (Ko, Warnang, Rere, Otoro, Logol, Heiban (Ebang), Laro, Shwai (Shirumba), Tiro, Moro)
Talodi languages (also called Talodi-Masakin, Lafofa) (Tegem, Lafofa, El Amira, Nding, Talodi (Jomang), Tocho, Acheron, Lumun, Torona, Ngile, Dagik (Dengebu))
Rashad languages (Tegali-Tagoi) (Rashad, Tegali, Tumali, Moreb, Tagoi, Turjuk, Tingal, Tukum, Turum)
Katla languages (Katla, Tima)

Ethnically, their speakers form part of the "Nuba".

Bibliography

Herman Bell. 1995. [The Nuba Mountains: Who Spoke What in 1976?]. Being a study of the published results from a major project of the Institute of African and Asian Studies: the Language Survey of the Nuba Mountains.
Roger Blench. Unpublished. [Kordofanian and Niger-Congo: an evaluation of the evidence].
P. A. and D. N. MacDiarmid. 1931. "The languages of the Nuba Mountains." Sudan Notes and Records 14: 149-162.
Carl Meinhof. 1915-1919. "Sprachstudien im egyptischen Sudan". Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen 9-9. "1. Tagoy." 6: 164-161. "2. Tumale". 6:182-205. "11. Tegele." 7:110-131. "12. Rashad." 7:132.
Thilo C. Schadeberg. 1981a. A survey of Kordofanian. SUGIA Beiheft 1-2. Hamburg:Helmut Buske Verlag.
Thilo C. Schadeberg. 1981b. "Das Kordofanische". Die Sprachen Afrikas. Band 1: Niger-Kordofanisch, ed. by Bernt Heine, T. C. Schadeberg, Ekkehard Wolff, pp. 117-28 SUGIA Beiheft 1-2. Hamburg:Helmut Buske Verlag.
Thilo C. Schadeberg. 1981c. "The classification of the Kadugli language group". Nilo-Saharan, ed. by T. C. Schadeberg and M. Lionel Bender, pp. 291-305. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.
Brenda Z. Seligmann. 1910-11. "Note on the language of the Nubas of Southern Kordofan." Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen 1:167-188.
Roland C. Stevenson. 1956-57. "A survey of the phonetics and grammatical structure of the Nuba Mountains languages, with particular reference to Otoro, Katcha, and Nyimang." Afrika und Übersee 40:73-84, 93-115; 41:27-65, 117-152, 171-196.
A. N. Tucker and M. A. Bryan. 1956. The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa. (Handbook of African Languages, Part III.) Oxford University Press: London.
A. N. Tucker and M. A. Bryan. 1966. Linguistic Analyses/The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa. (Handbook of African Languages.) Oxford University Press: London.
Lorenz Tutschek. 1848. "Über die Tumale-Sprache." Gelehrte Anzeigen, herausgegeben von Mitgliedern der k. bayer. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Nrs. 91-93; Spalten 729-52. (=Bulletin der königl. Akademie der Wissenschaften. Nrs. 29-31.)
Lorenz Tutschek. 1848-50. "On the Tumali language". Proceedings of the Philological Society for 1846-47 and 1847-48. Vol 3:239-54. Proceedings of the Philological Society for 1848-49 and 1849-50. Vol. 4:138-9.

External links

[Katcha-English Dictionary] (one of the Kadu languages)
[The Nuba Mountains Homepage]

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