Map of the distribution of the Chadic languages within Africa
Detailed map of the distribution of Chadic languages in Western and Central Africa
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages[1] spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely spoken Chadic language is Hausa, a lingua franca of much of inland Eastern West Africa, particularly Niger and the northern half of Nigeria. Hausa is the only Chadic language with more than 1 million speakers.[citation needed]
Composition
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 the language isolateKujargé as an early-diverged member, which subsequently became influenced by East Chadic, has been made by Blench (2008).[3]
A chart of the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic languages.
Loanwords
Chadic languages contain many Nilo-Saharan loanwords from either the Songhay or Maban branches, pointing to early contact between Chadic and Nilo-Saharan speakers as Chadic was migrating west.[4]
Although Adamawa languages are spoken adjacently to Chadic languages, interaction between Chadic and Adamawa is limited.[5]
Pronouns
Pronouns in Proto-Chadic, as compared to pronouns in Proto-Afroasiatic (Vossen & Dimmendaal 2020:351):[6]
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 of Igor 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 at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/220Archived 2020-01-01 at the Wayback 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 at http://ids.clld.org/contributions/221Archived 2020-01-01 at the Wayback 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 the Wayback 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.
