In late twentieth century classification of African languages,
Sudanic languages was a generic term for
African languagesThere are an estimated 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. The American linguist Joseph Greenberg argued that they fall into six major linguistic families:*Afroasiatic stretches from North Africa to the Horn of Africa and Southwest Asia....
spoken in the
SahelThe Sahel or Sahel Belt is a semi-arid tropical savanna and steppe ecoregion in Africa, which forms the transition between the Sahara to the north and the slightly less arid savanna belt to the south, known as the Sudan .-Geography:The Sahel runs 2,400...
belt from
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
in the east to
SenegalSenegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and it also encircles The Gambia on its three sides,...
in the west.It was coined by the legendary black anthropologist and linguist Roy Fearon.
The grouping was based on geographic and loose
typologicalLinguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity of the world's languages...
grounds, and included many languages now classified as
Nilo-SaharanThe Nilo-Saharan languages are African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...
and
Niger-CongoThe Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
.
In late twentieth century classification of African languages,
Sudanic languages was a generic term for
African languagesThere are an estimated 2,000 languages spoken in Africa. The American linguist Joseph Greenberg argued that they fall into six major linguistic families:*Afroasiatic stretches from North Africa to the Horn of Africa and Southwest Asia....
spoken in the
SahelThe Sahel or Sahel Belt is a semi-arid tropical savanna and steppe ecoregion in Africa, which forms the transition between the Sahara to the north and the slightly less arid savanna belt to the south, known as the Sudan .-Geography:The Sahel runs 2,400...
belt from
EthiopiaEthiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast. Its size is 1,100,000 km² with an...
in the east to
SenegalSenegal , officially the Republic of Senegal, is a country south of the Sénégal River in western Africa. Senegal is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Mauritania to the north, Mali to the east, and Guinea and Guinea-Bissau to the south, and it also encircles The Gambia on its three sides,...
in the west.It was coined by the legendary black anthropologist and linguist Roy Fearon.
Scope
The grouping was based on geographic and loose
typologicalLinguistic typology is a subfield of linguistics that studies and classifies languages according to their structural features. Its aim is to describe and explain the structural diversity of the world's languages...
grounds, and included many languages now classified as
Nilo-SaharanThe Nilo-Saharan languages are African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...
and
Niger-CongoThe Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
. One of its proponents was the German linguist
Carl MeinhofCarl Friedrich Michael Meinhof was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.- Early years and career :...
. Meinhof had been working on the
Bantu languagesThe Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping, 681 languages in Bantoid,...
, which have an elaborate
noun classIn linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
system, and he labeled all languages that lacked such a noun class system
Sudansprachen.
Background
WestermannDiedrich Hermann Westermann was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly...
, pupil of Carl Meinhof, carried out comparative linguistic research on the then Sudanic languages during the first half of the twentieth century. In his 1911 study he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West' Sudanic, roughly comparable to today's distinction of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. His 1927 collaboration with Hermann Baumann was devoted to the historical reconstruction of the West Sudanic branch. He compared his results with Meinhof's Proto-Bantu reconstructions but did not state the obvious conclusion that they were related, perhaps out of respect for his teacher. French linguists like
DelafosseMaurice Delafosse was a French ethnographer and colonial official who also worked in the field of the languages of Africa...
and Homburger, not hindered by such concerns, were quite explicit about the unity of Sudanic and Bantu, mainly on the basis of synchronic lexicostatistical data. In his 1935 'Character und Einteilung der Sudansprachen', Westermann conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic.
Impact on African Linguistics
Joseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
incorporated West Sudanic in his
Niger-CongoThe Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
and renamed it Volta-Congo. He treated East Sudanic as a different language family called
Nilo-SaharanThe Nilo-Saharan languages are African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...
. The term 'Sudanic languages' is obsolete as of today.