Map of the distribution of the Chadic languages within Africa
Detailed map of the distribution of Chadic languages in Western and Central Africa
TheChadic languages form a branch of theAfroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of theSahel. They include 196 languages[1] spoken across northernNigeria, southernNiger, southernChad, and northernCameroon. By far the most widely spoken Chadic language isHausa, alingua franca of much of inland EasternWest Africa, particularly Niger and the northern half of Nigeria. Hausa is the only Chadic language with more than 1 million speakers.[citation needed]
Paul Newman (1977) classified the languages into the four groups which have been accepted in all subsequent literature. Further subbranching, however, has not been as robust;Roger Blench (2006), for example, only accepts the A/B bifurcation of East Chadic.[2] Subsequent work by Joseph Lovestrand argues strongly that Kujarge is a valid member of East Chadic. The placing of Luri as a primary split of West Chadic is erroneous. Bernard Caron (2004) shows that this language is South Bauchi and part of the Polci cluster. A suggestion for including thelanguage isolateKujargé as an early-diverged member, which subsequently became influenced by East Chadic, has been made by Blench (2008).[3]
Chadic languages contain many Nilo-Saharan loanwords from either theSonghay orMaban branches, pointing to early contact between Chadic and Nilo-Saharan speakers as Chadic was migrating west.[4]
AlthoughAdamawa languages are spoken adjacently to Chadic languages, interaction between Chadic and Adamawa is limited.[5]
Sample basic vocabulary in different Chadic branches listed in order from west to east, with reconstructions of other Afroasiatic branches also given for comparison:
Caron, Bernard 2004. Le Luri: quelques notes sur une langue tchadique du Nigeria. In: Pascal Boyeldieu & Pierre Nougayrol (eds.), Langues et Cultures: Terrains d’Afrique. Hommages à France Cloarec-Heiss (Afrique et Language 7). 193–201. Louvain-Paris: Peeters.
Lukas, Johannes (1936) 'The linguistic situation in the Lake Chad area in Central Africa.'Africa, 9, 332–349.
Newman, Paul; Ma, Roxana (1966). "Comparative Chadic: Phonology and lexicon".Journal of African Languages.5:218–251.hdl:2022/21342.
Newman, Paul (1977) 'Chadic classification and reconstructions.'Afroasiatic Linguistics 5, 1, 1–42.
Newman, Paul (1978) 'Chado-Hamitic 'adieu': new thoughts on Chadic language classification', in Fronzaroli, Pelio (ed.),Atti del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Linguistica Camito-Semitica. Florence: Instituto de Linguistica e di Lingue Orientali, Università di Firenze, 389–397.
Newman, Paul (1980)The Classification of Chadic within Afroasiatic. Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden.
Schuh, Russell (2003) 'Chadic overview', in M. Lionel Bender, Gabor Takacs, and David L. Appleyard (eds.),Selected Comparative-Historical Afrasian Linguistic Studies in Memory ofIgor M. Diakonoff,LINCOM Europa, 55–60.
Data sets
Kraft, Charles H. (1981). "CLDF:Wordlist".CLDF dataset derived from Kraft's "Chadic Wordlists" from 1981. Geneva.doi:10.5281/zenodo.3534953.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Blench, Roger. 2012.Linguistic evidence for the chronological stratification of populations South of Lake Chad. Presentation for Mega-Tchad Colloquium in Naples, September 13–15, 2012.
^Vossen, Rainer and Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020.The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Jungraithmayr, Herrmann; Ibriszimow, Dymitr (1994).Chadic Lexical Roots: Tentative reconstruction, grading, distribution and comments. (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika; 20), volume I, Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.
^Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Hausa dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online athttp://ids.clld.org/contributions/220Archived 2020-01-01 at theWayback Machine, Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
^Shimizu, Kiyoshi. 1978.The Southern Bauchi group of Chadic languages: a survey report. (Africana Marburgensia: Sonderheft, 2.) Marburg/Lahn: Africana Marburgensia.
^Cosper, Ronald. 2015. Polci dictionary. In: Key, Mary Ritchie & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The Intercontinental Dictionary Series. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online athttp://ids.clld.org/contributions/221Archived 2020-01-01 at theWayback Machine, Accessed on 2019-12-31.)
^Doornbos, Paul. 1981. Field notes on Kujarge, language metadata, 200-word list plus numerals and pronouns.
^Ehret, Christopher (1987). "Proto-Cushitic Reconstruction".Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika.8:7–180.
^Aklilu, Yilma (2003). "Comparative phonology of the Maji languages".Journal of Ethiopian Studies.36:59–88.
^Kossmann, Maarten. 2009.Tarifiyt Berber vocabularyArchived 2024-05-26 at theWayback Machine. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.)World Loanword Database. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
^Kogan, Leonid (2012). "Proto-Semitic Lexicon". In Weninger, Stefan (ed.).The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 179–258.ISBN978-3-11-025158-6.
^Ehret, Christopher (1995).Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary. University of California Press.ISBN0-520-09799-8.
