Language Families
Nilo-Saharan
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A proposed family of around 210 languages spoken by roughly 70 million people across seventeen African nations along the upper Chari and Nile river basins, from Algeria and Libya in the west and north to Egypt and Tanzania in the east. Joseph Greenberg established the family in his 1963 classification of African languages, and it remains the least secure of his four African groupings.
Facts
Disputed
Proto-Language StatusUnreconstructed beyond individual branches; the genetic unity of the proposed family is itself the open question, not merely the shape of its common ancestor. 1 Glottolog, published by the Max Planck Institute, does not recognise the unity of the family, and some linguists have called it 'Greenberg's wastebasket' for otherwise unclassified non-click African languages; others, including Roger Blench, argue morphological evidence across the branches makes the family likely valid. No Proto-Nilo-Saharan has been securely reconstructed because the genetic unity of its branches is itself unresolved. RegionUpper Chari and Nile river basins, spanning seventeen African nations from Algeria and Libya in the west and north to Egypt and Tanzania in the east 1 Speaker Count Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Greenberg established Nilo-Saharan as one of his four proposed African language families in The Languages of Africa (1963); it remains the least secure of the four.
Includes
Zarma, Languages Zarma is a Songhay language, and the Songhay branch own placement within Nilo-Saharan is genuinely disputed: Gerrit Dimmendaal (2008) argues Songhay is better treated as an independent family, while Roger Blench proposes a narrower Songhay-Saharan branch within Nilo-Saharan. Recorded as associated rather than holds pending that debate.
Sources
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Proto-Language Status
Starostin (2016) does not accept a relationship between the branches of Nilo-Saharan, though he leaves open the possibility that some of them may prove to be related; his lexicostatistics-based skepticism stands beside Roger Blench's view that morphological similarities across the putative branches make the family likely valid, and beside Glottolog (Max Planck Institute), which does not recognise the unity of the family at all.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneWikipedia: Nilo-Saharan Languages, Wikimedia Foundation
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