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| Zaghawa | |
|---|---|
| Beṛia | |
| Native to | Chad,Sudan |
| Region | northeastern Chad, northwestern Sudan |
| Ethnicity | Zaghawa,Awlad Mana |
Native speakers | 450,000 (2019–2022)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Beria Erfe script[2] Latin script (Zaghawa alphabet) Arabic script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | zag |
| Glottolog | zagh1240 |
| Linguasphere | 02-CAA-aa |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Zaghawa (Zaghawa: ) is aNilo-Saharan language spoken by theZaghawa people of east-centralChad (in theSahel) and northwesternSudan (Darfur). The people who speak this language call itBeria, fromBeri, theendonym of the Zaghawa people, anda, Zaghawa for "mouth". It has been estimated that there are about 447,400 native speakers of the Zaghawa language, who primarily live in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan. It is also spoken by a smaller number of people inLibya.
Zaghawa clans are:[3]
Zaghawa dialects, which do not always correspond to clan divisions, are:[3]
| Dialect | Other names | Clans | Population | Major communities | Locations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuba | Bideyat (Arabic), Borogat | Biria, Brogat | 15,000 | Bahaï, Bao Bilia, Kalaït | Chad: canton Kobé-Nord-Est (Iriba s.p.); sub-prefectures Bao Bilia and Kalaït (Ennedi prefecture); Sudan: Northern Dar Fur |
| Dirong-Guruf | Durong, Gourouf | Dirong, Guruf | 4,000 | Ebiri, Mardébé, Tronga | Chad: cantons Dirong and Gourouf, and a few villages in Kapka canton (Iriba s.p.) |
| Kube | Zaghawa (Arabic), Kobe | Kapka, Kige, Kuba | 25,000 | Bakaoré (Matadjana), Iriba, Kouba, Tiné | Chad: cantons Kapka, Kobé-Nord-Est, Kobé-Nord-Ouest, and Kobé-Sud (Iriba s.p.); Sudan: Northern Dar Fur (near the Chadian border) |
| Wegi | Twer (Arabic), Artagh, Gala, Wagí | Wegi | 100,000 | Ambodu, Kornoye, Kutum | Sudan: Northern Dar Fur |
Zaghawa has a nine-vowel system withadvanced-tongue-rootvowel harmony. The vowels fall into two sets:
with the vowels of affixes depending on the set of vowels in the stem, and with /a/ functioning in both sets. There is some variation among dialects as to the presence of a tenth vowel, /ə/, which in some dialects functions as the +ATR counterpart of /a/. Diphthongs are/eiəuiə/ and/aɪaʊɔɪ/.
Consonants are simple:
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | ||||
| voiced | b | d | g | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | (ħ) | h | ||
| voiced | (ʒ) | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | |||||
| Trill | r | |||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||
Osman also includes/ʒħ/ in this list.[4]/ʃ/ occurs primarily in the Sudanese dialect as a variant of/s/ appearing before/i/. The phonemic status of therhotics are unclear: Osman states that[ɾr] may be exchanged without any change in meaning, yet maintains that they are distinct phonemes. Of theobstruents,/p/ may not occur word-initially, and only/ptks/ may occur word-finally, with /b/ in final position in some dialects./r/ may not occur word-initially, and/fɾ/ only appear in the middle of words, as in/tòrfù/'bird'.[4]
There are fivetones,high, mid, low, rising, falling, all of which may occur on simple vowels, for example in/ɪ́ɡɪ́/I watered,/ɪ̌ɡɪ̂/I said,/ɪ̀ɡɪ̀/right (direction). Tone distinguishes words, but also has grammatical functions; for example, the plural of many nouns is formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high, and the perfective aspect of many verbs is similarly formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high.
Words tend to be short, often CV and CVCV. The most complex syllables are CVC and CRV, whereR is either of the tworhotics.
The Zaghawa Latin alphabet is as follows:
| Zaghawa alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | Ɲ | Ŋ | O | P | R | S | Sh | T | U | W | Y | ||||
| a | b | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | o | p | r | s | sh | t | u | w | y | ||||
| Phonetic value | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | d | ɛ | f | g | h,ħ | ɪ | ʒ | k | l | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ɔ | p | ɾ,r | s | ʃ | t | ʊ | w | j | ||||
A macron is used to distinguish theadvanced tongue root vowels/ieəou/, and IPA tone diacritics are used.
In the 1950s, a Zaghawa schoolteacher named Adam Tajir created an alphabet for the Zaghawa language that was based on the clan identification marks (brands). Sometimes known as thecamel alphabet, he based the phoneme choice on theArabic language rather than on Zaghawa. Also, some of the marks were longer than others, which made it harder to use it as a computer font.
In 2000, a Beri veterinarian named Siddick Adam Issa prepared an improved version of the alphabet which is namedBeria Giray Erfe (Beria Writing Marks). In 2007, this system of writing was turned into a computer font by Seonil Yun in cooperation withSIL International and the Mission Protestante Franco-Suisse au Tchad.[5]
There is also anArabic script alphabet under development, based on the Tijani system of writing African languages in the 13th century.
| National | |
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| Other | |
