Zaghawa language

Zaghawa
Zaghawa
Beṛia
Native to	Chad, Sudan
Region	northeastern Chad, northwestern Sudan
Ethnicity	Zaghawa, Awlad Mana
Native speakers	450,000 (2019–2022)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Saharan Eastern Zaghawa; ; ;
Dialects	Bidayat (Tuba); Wagi (Twer); Kube; Dirong; Guruf; Brogat;
Writing system	Zaghawa alphabet (proposed) ; Latin alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zag
Glottolog	zagh1240
Linguasphere	02-CAA-aa
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Zaghawa is a

endonym

of the Zaghawa people, and a, Zaghawa for "mouth". It has been estimated that there are about 447,400 native speakers of the Zaghawa language, who primarily live in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan. It is also spoken by a smaller number of speakers in Libya.

Dialects

Zaghawa clans are:^[2]

Beria (Arabic: Zaghawa)
Tuba (Arabic: Bideyat): Biria, Brogat
Kube (Arabic: Zaghawa): Dirong, Guruf, Kube, Kapka
Wegi (Arabic: Twer)

Zaghawa dialects, which do not always correspond to clan divisions, are:^[2]

Dialect	Other names	Clans	Population	Major communities	Locations
Tuba	Bideyat (Arabic), Borogat	Biria, Brogat	15,000	Bahaï, Bao Bilia, Kalaït	Chad: canton Kobé-Nord-Est (Iriba s.p.); sub-prefectures Bao Bilia and Kalaït (Ennedi prefecture); Sudan: Northern Dar Fur
Dirong-Guruf	Durong, Gourouf	Dirong, Guruf	4,000	Ebiri, Mardébé, Tronga	Chad: cantons Dirong and Gourouf, and a few villages in Kapka canton (Iriba s.p.)
Kube	Zaghawa (Arabic), Kobe	Kapka, Kige, Kuba	25,000	Bakaoré (Matadjana), Iriba, Kouba, Tiné	Chad: cantons Kapka, Kobé-Nord-Est, Kobé-Nord-Ouest, and Kobé-Sud (Iriba s.p.); Sudan: Northern Dar Fur (near the Chadian border)
Wegi	Twer (Arabic), Artagh, Gala, Wagí	Wegi	100,000	Ambodu, Kornoye, Kutum	Sudan: Northern Dar Fur

Phonology

Vowels

Zaghawa has a nine-vowel system with

advanced-tongue-root vowel harmony

. The vowels fall into two sets:

/i e o u/
/ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/,

with the vowels of affixes depending on the set of vowels in the stem, and with /a/ functioning in both sets. There is some variation among dialects as to the presence of a tenth vowel, /ə/, which in some dialects functions as the +ATR counterpart of /a/. Diphthongs are /ei əu iə/ and /aɪ aʊ ɔɪ/.

Consonants

Consonants are simple:


		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Stop	voiceless	p	t			k
Stop	voiced	b	d			g
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ʃ			(ħ)	h
Fricative	voiced			(ʒ)
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Approximant			l		j	w
Trill			r
Tap			ɾ

/p b t d k ɡ, m n ɲ ŋ, f s ʃ h, ɾ r, l j w/.

Osman also includes /ʒ ħ/ in this list. /ʃ/ occurs primarily in the Sudanese dialect as a variant of /s/ appearing before /i/. The phonemic status of the

rhotics are unclear: Osman states that [ɾ r] may be exchanged without any change in meaning, yet maintains that they are distinct phonemes. Of the obstruents

, /p/ may not occur word-initially, and only /p t k s/ may occur word-finally, with /b/ in final position in some dialects. /r/ may not occur word-initially, and /f ɾ/ only appear in the middle of words, as in /tòrfù/ 'bird'.

Tone

There are five tones, high, mid, low, rising, falling, all of which may occur on simple vowels, for example in /ɪ́ɡɪ́/ I watered, /ɪ̌ɡɪ̂/ I said, /ɪ̀ɡɪ̀/ right (direction). Tone distinguishes words, but also has grammatical functions; for example, the plural of many nouns is formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high, and the perfective aspect of many verbs is similarly formed by changing the tone of the final syllable from low to high.

Syllable structure

Words tend to be short, often CV and CVCV. The most complex syllables are CVC and CRV, where R is either of the two rhotics.

Orthography

In the 1950s, a Zaghawa schoolteacher named Adam Tajir created an alphabet for the Zaghawa language that was based on the clan identification marks (brands). Sometimes known as the camel alphabet, he based the phoneme choice on the Arabic language rather than on Zaghawa. Also, some of the marks were longer than others, which made it harder to use it as a computer font.

In 2000, a Beri veterinarian named Siddick Adam Issa prepared an improved version of the alphabet which is named

Beria Giray Erfe (Beria Writing Marks). In 2007, this system of writing was turned into a computer font by Seonil Yun in cooperation with SIL International and the Mission Protestante Franco-Suisse au Tchad.^[3]

There is also an Arabic script alphabet under development, based on the Tijani system of writing African languages in the 13th century.

Notes

^ Zaghawa at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
^ ^a ^b Anonby, Erik John and Johnson, Eric. 2001. A sociolinguistic survey of the Zaghawa (Beria) of Chad and Sudan, p.9. Moursal-N'Djaména, Chad: Association SIL Tchad.
^ http://scripts.sil.org/ZaghawaBeria_Home Zaghawa Beria Font