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.