Masalit language

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; Arabic: ماساليت) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.

Masalit
Kanaa Masarak
Native to	Chad, Sudan
Region	Ouaddaï, Sila (Chad), West Darfur, South Darfur (Sudan)
Ethnicity	Masalit
Native speakers	980,000 (2022–2024)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Maban Masalit languages Masalit
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: mls – Masalit mdg – Massalat
Glottolog	nucl1440  Nuclear Masalit mass1262  Massalat
ELP	Massalat

Linguistic map of the non-Arab peoples of Darfur, showing the extent of the Masalit language in Sudan.

Masalit, known as the Massalat, moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was 30,000 as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.^[2]

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ɨ	u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ	ʌ	ɔ
Open		a

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Stop/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k	(ʔ)
	voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	g
	prenasal	ᵐb	ⁿd	ⁿd͡ʒ	ᵑɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ	(x)	h
	voiced	v	(z)
Trill			r
Lateral			l
Approximant	labial			ɥ	w
	central			j

• It has been stated that occasional click sounds [ǀ] and [ǃ] may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
• Sounds /r, l, m, k/ can occur as geminated [rː, lː, mː, kː].
• Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
• /z, x/ only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
• [ʔ] is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
• Sounds /p, ɥ, v/ only occur in word-initial position.^[3]

Sociolects

The Masalit language has two sociolects:

• "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative grammar
• "Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from Sudanese Arabic, the regional lingua franca and language of education.