Editing Nilo-Saharan languages (section)

{{Short description|Proposed family of African languages}}
{{EngvarB|date=October 2022}}
{{Infobox language family
| name          = Nilo-Saharan
| speakers      = c. 70 million for all branches listed below.<ref name=eth>{{cite web | url=https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroup/39/ | title=Nilo-Saharan; Ethnologue | access-date=2023-08-06 | archive-date=2023-03-09 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230309092536/https://www.ethnologue.com/subgroup/39/ | url-status=live }}</ref><!--The figure as of the 26th ed. (2023) is 66.4 million. This includes a count of several million from last century for growing languages such as 750,000 Lendu (dated to 1996), which could easily have doubled in the meantime, so rounding up to the nearest 10M.-->
| acceptance    = disputed
| region        = [[Central Africa]], north-central Africa and [[East Africa]]
| familycolor   = Nilo-Saharan
| family        = Proposed language family
| map           = Nilo-Saharan.png
| mapcaption    = Distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages (in yellow)
| child1        = [[Berta languages|Berta]]
| child2        = [[Bʼaga languages|Bʼaga]]
| child3        = [[Fur languages|Fur]]
| child4        = [[Kadu languages|Kadu]]
| child5        = [[Koman languages|Koman]]
| child6        = [[Kuliak languages|Kuliak]]
| child7        = [[Kunama languages|Kunama]]
| child8        = [[Maban languages|Maban]]
| child9        = [[Saharan languages|Saharan]]
| child10       = [[Songhay languages|Songhay]]
| child11       = [[Central Sudanic languages|Central Sudanic]]
| child12       = [[Eastern Sudanic languages|Eastern Sudanic]]
| child13       = {{extinct}}[[Mimi-D]]?
| child14       = {{extinct}}Plateau?<ref>{{cite journal |last= Blench |first= Roger |year= 2015 |url= http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Isolates/MT%20XX%20Blench%20off%20print.pdf |title= Was there a now-vanished branch of Nilo-Saharan on the Dogon Plateau? Evidence from substrate vocabulary in Bangime and Dogon |journal= Mother Tongue |issue= 20}}</ref>
| protoname     = [[Wiktionary:Appendix:Proto-Nilo-Saharan reconstructions|Proto-Nilo-Saharan]]
| iso2          = ssa
| iso5          = ssa
| glotto        = none
}}

The '''Nilo-Saharan languages''' are a proposed family of around 210 [[African languages]]<ref name=eth/> spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers,<ref name=eth/> mainly in the upper parts of the [[Chari River|Chari]] and [[Nile]] rivers, including historic [[Nubia]], north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from [[Algeria]] to [[Benin]] in the west; from [[Libya]] to the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] in the centre; and from [[Egypt]] to [[Tanzania]] in the east.

As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central [[Sahara]] Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding [[Kunama languages|Kunama]], [[Kuliak]], and [[Songhai languages|Songhay]]) are found in the modern countries of [[Sudan]] and [[South Sudan]], through which the Nile River flows.

In his book ''[[The Languages of Africa]]'' (1963), [[Joseph Greenberg]] named the group and argued it was a [[genetic (linguistics)|genetic]] family. It contained all the languages that were not included in the [[Niger–Congo languages|Niger–Congo]], [[Afroasiatic languages|Afroasiatic]] or [[Khoisan languages|Khoisan]] families. Although some linguists have referred to the phylum as "Greenberg's [[Wastebasket taxon|wastebasket]]", into which he placed all the otherwise unaffiliated non-[[click languages]] of Africa,<ref>{{cite book |first1=Lyle |last1=Campbell |first2=Mauricio J. |last2=Mixco |title=A Glossary of Historical Linguistics |year=2007 |publisher=University of Utah Press |isbn=978-0-87480-892-6 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=P. H. |last=Matthews |title=Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics |year=2007 |edition=2nd |location=Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-920272-0 }},</ref> other specialists in the field have accepted it as a working hypothesis since Greenberg's classification.<ref name="BlenchSouag">Blench, Roger & Lameen Souag. m.s. ''[http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Nilo-Saharan/General/Saharan%20Songhay%20branch.pdf Saharan and Songhay form a branch of Nilo-Saharan] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160327212516/http://rogerblench.info/Language/Nilo-Saharan/General/Saharan%20Songhay%20branch.pdf |date=2016-03-27 }}''.</ref> Linguists accept that it is a challenging proposal to demonstrate but contend that it looks more promising the more work is done.<ref>{{cite book |first=Gerrit J. |last=Dimmendaal |chapter=Nilo-Saharan Languages |title=International Encyclopedia of Linguistics |year=1992 |location=Oxford |volume=3 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/internationalenc00newy/page/100 100–104] |isbn=0-19-505196-3 |chapter-url-access=registration |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/internationalenc00newy |url=https://archive.org/details/internationalenc00newy/page/100 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=M. Lionel |last=Bender |chapter=Nilo-Saharan |title=African Languages, An Introduction |year=2000 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=43–73 |isbn=0-521-66178-1 }}</ref><ref name="Blench & Ahland (2010)">{{cite conference |first1=Roger |last1=Blench |first2=Colleen |last2=Ahland |year=2010 |title=The Classification of Gumuz and Koman Languages |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120316221945/http://25images.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/player/player.php?id=72&id_sequence=433&quality=hd |archive-date=March 16, 2012 |url=http://25images.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/player/player.php?id=72&id_sequence=433&quality=hd |conference=''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyons, December 4 |accessdate=September 5, 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Some of the constituent groups of Nilo-Saharan are estimated to predate the [[Neolithic Revolution#Africa|African neolithic]]. For example, the unity of [[Eastern Sudanic]] is estimated to date to at least the 5th millennium BC.<ref>{{cite book|first=John Desmond |last=Clark |title=From Hunters to Farmers: The Causes and Consequences of Food Production in Africa |publisher=University of California Press |year=1984|page=31 |isbn=0-520-04574-2 }}</ref> Nilo-Saharan genetic unity would thus be much older still and date to the late [[Upper Paleolithic]]. The earliest written language associated with the Nilo-Saharan family is [[Old Nubian]], one of the oldest written African languages, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD.

This larger classification system is not accepted by all linguists, however. ''[[Glottolog]]'' (2013), for example, a publication of the [[Max Planck Institute]] in Germany, does not recognise the unity of the Nilo-Saharan family or even of the Eastern Sudanic branch; [[Georgiy Starostin]] (2016) likewise 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 to each other once the necessary [[Linguistic reconstruction|reconstructive]] work is done. According to Güldemann (2018), "the current state of research is not sufficient to prove the Nilo-Saharan hypothesis."<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Languages and Linguistics of Africa|last=Güldemann|first=Tom|editor-last=Güldemann|editor-first=Tom|publisher=De Gruyter Mouton|chapter=Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa|year=2018|isbn=978-3-11-042606-9|doi=10.1515/9783110421668-002|location=Berlin|pages=299–308|series=The World of Linguistics series|volume=11|s2cid=133888593}}</ref>