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Songhay
Songhai
Geographic
distribution:
middle Niger River (Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria); scattered oases (Niger, Mali, Algeria)
Linguistic classification:Nilo-Saharan
  • Songhay
Subdivisions:
ISO 639-2 / 5:son

The Songhay or Songhai languages (pronounced [soŋaj], or [soŋoj] are found in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao and are a group of closely related languages/dialects. They are centered around the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west Afrikan states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the era of the Songhay Empire. In Mali, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao (east of Timbuktu) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education.[1]

As regards interintelligibility of Songhay languages, the dialect of Koyraboro Senni spoken in Gao is unintelligible to speakers of the Zarma dialect of Niger, according to the Ethnologue.[2]

A few precolonial poems and letters composed in Songhay and written in the Arabic alphabet are extant in Timbuktu.[3] However, Songhay is currently written in the Latin script.

Varieties

Researchers classify the Songhay languages into two main branches, Southern and Northern.[4] 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 (downriver from and south of Mali) including in the capital city, Niamey. Koyraboro Senni, with 400,000 speakers, is the language of the town of Gao, the seat of the old Songhay 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 languages.[5]

Grammar

Songhay is a tonal, SOV language.

References

  1. Heath 2005
  2. Ethnologue report for Niger
  3. Hunwick and Boye 2008: ____
  4. A map of the varieties is provided by Ethnologue at its Web site. See the list of External Links.
  5. SIL Working Papers on Songhay[1]

External links

Bibliography

Publisher and publication abbreviations:

  • Dimmendaal, Gerrit. 2008. Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5): 843ff.
  • 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. [André]. 1956. La langue sonay et ses dialectes. Dakar: IFAN. Series: Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire; 47. 627 pp

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",[2] 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.
  • Ehret, Christopher. 2001. A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. SUGIA - Supplement 12. Köln: Köppe. 663 pp
  • 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