Kadu languages

The Kadu languages ​​( also: Kado, Kadugli or Kadugli - Krongo languages, Tumtum ) are a group of languages ​​in the state of South Kordofan in Sudan ( Nuba Mountains ) are spoken by few people. Today they are mostly of the Nilo-Saharan language family attributed.

According to Bender ( 2000), this group even seems to belong to the " core " of this Sprachphylums. Ehret holds the Kadu languages ​​other hand, for isolated.

Although Greenberg (1963 ), this group ( " Tumtum " ) was attached to the kordofanischen branch within the Niger -Congo language family, serious doubts about such a relationship have emerged later.

While the kordofanischen languages ​​at noun in the singular and plural have class prefix, use the Kadu languages ​​their nominal prefixes or suffixes mainly for Numerusunterscheidung. However, there are, depending on the Katcha ( Dholubi ) appears to be a gender distinction ( masculine, feminine, neuter ), which manifests itself only through concordance with other parts of speech.

The term Kadu goes back to a word for "man" in these languages ​​, for example is " people " on Krongo Katu.

Structure

Western subgroup:

  • Tulishi [ tey ] (approx. 9,000 speakers)
  • Kanga [ kcp ] (approx. 8,000 speakers)
  • Keiga [ kec ] (approx. 6,000 speakers)

Central Sub-Group:

  • Katcha - Kadugli - Miri [ xtc ] (about 82,000 speakers; closes with a Tumma )

Eastern subgroup:

  • Krongo [ kgo ] (about 22,000 speakers; own name: Niino mó - dì )
  • Tumtum [ tbr ] (approx. 7,000 speakers)

About the Krongo exists a grammar written in German by Reh (1985 ) with texts and a dictionary.

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