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Kir-Abbaian Languages

African Language Families

The Kir-Abbaian languages, also called the Southern Eastern Sudanic languages, form one of two primary divisions of the proposed Eastern Sudanic languages, distinguished from the other division by using an n sound rather than a k sound in first person pronouns. The languages are spoken across Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda, and the family comprises five subdivisions, the large and well known Nilotic languages, which include Maasai, along with the Surmic, Eastern Jebel, Temein, and Daju languages. Eastern Sudanic is in turn placed within the wider, still debated, Nilo-Saharan family; the linguist George Starostin has rejected Eastern Sudanic itself as an established group, reflecting the unsettled state of Nilo-Saharan classification generally.

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