Songhay languages

The Songhai Djerma is a group of closely related languages ​​and dialects, which are concentrated around the Niger and find due to the great importance of the kingdom of Songhai of 15 wide until the 17th century spread as a lingua franca.

Main branches

The Songhai languages ​​are divided into two main branches:

Southern Songhai is spoken mainly by the River Niger around. The largest member is Zarma ( Djerma ), one of the main languages ​​in Niger with 2 million speakers, mainly in the south of the country, including the capital, Niamey. South of it is spoken in northern Benin Dendi, which is greatly influenced by Bariba. West thereof to the borders of Mali Kaado is spoken. In Mali talking about 400,000 people Koyra Senni beside it can be found in the West Koyra Chiini to the rivers of the Niger and south of the country Humburi Senni as isolated linguistic enclave around the city Hombori. The Southern Songhai is also Discovered in 1998, in several villages about 120 kilometers west of Hombori spoken " Tondi Songway Kiini " assigned ( " Songhai language of the mountain people "). The breakdown of the Southern Songhai is controversial. If we focus on the distinction between Western, Central and Eastern Songhai, the following scheme:

• West Songhai Djenné Chiini
• Koyra Chiini

• Humburi Senni

• Koyra Senni
• Tondi Songway Kiini
• Zarma Kaado
• Zarma dialects

Northern Songhai is a much smaller group of dialects in the Sahara, which are heavily influenced by Berber languages, especially Tamascheq. From nomads Tihishit in the central Niger in the area of Mazababou into two sub- dialects, Tagdal and Tabarog, and Tadaksahak spoken in northern Mali to Ménaka. From sedentary peoples is Tasawaq in northern Niger, which in the order Ingall splits Ingelsi spoken and the now extinct language of Agadez, and uses the voice-over to the Algerian- Moroccan border in Tabelbala Korandje. For the northern Songhai, this results in the following scheme:

• Spoken by nomads Tadaksahak
• Tihishit Tagdal
• Tabarog

• Tasawaq Ingelsi
• Emghedeshie ( extinct language of Agadez )

Classification

Before Joseph Greenberg was unclear how the Songhai languages ​​are classified. Diedrich Hermann Westermann was unsure whether he classify the language as isolated or should it provide to Gur, and Maurice Delafosse they clustered to the Mande languages. Currently, the Songhai languages ​​are considered one of the Nilo-Saharan languages ​​according to Greenberg's new classification of African languages ​​in 1963. Greenberg draws on 70 words, including pronouns, whose relationship with the Nilo-Saharan, he postulated. This argument was especially carried on by Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret. Bender Songhai considered as a separate subfamily of the Nilo-Saharan. Based on 565 from him as related classified words, Ehret Songhai sees the other hand, as part of the westsahelischen branch to which, inter alia, the Maba - languages ​​of western Sudan and eastern Chad are.

This classification is, however, still controversial. Greenberg's work was supported by Lacroix ( 1969, pp. 91 f ) strongly criticized the recognized only the 30 identified by Greenberg related words as such. That they are almost all to be found in the Nigerian Zarma and related to words from the neighboring Saharan languages ​​, but rather defines a classification close as loanwords. Certain similarities between the Songhai and Mande have long been known. The possibility of a relationship between the two language families was by Hans Günther Mukarovsky (1966 ), Denis Creissels (1981) and Robert Nicolaï (1977, 1984) considered. Creissels took about 50 comparison points, including many body parts and suffixes (eg, the causative suffix - endi ). Nicolaï not only found about 450 similar words, but also suspicious typological similarities. Ultimately, however, came Nicolaï to the conclusion that this approach is inappropriate and presented in 1990 fundamentally new hypothesized that Songhai was a Berber -based creole language whose structure was influenced by Mande. He substantiated this hypothesis with 412 possible similarities of basic vocabulary ( tasa "liver" ) to obvious borrowings ( anzad " violin ", alkaadi " Kadi " ) range. Others, such as Gerrit Dimmendaal, but could not be convinced of it, and Nicolaï (2003) seems to be the question of the origin of the Songhai still be considered open, but argued vehemently against the etymologies proposed by Ehret and Bender.

As morphological similarities with the Nilo-Saharan Greenberg postulated, for example, the pronouns ai " I " (eg Zaghawa ai), ni 'you' (eg Kanuri nyi ), yer "we" (eg Kanuri -ye ), been "their" (eg Kanuri wi), the adjectives and relative pronouns forming suffixes -ma (eg Kanuri -ma) and -ko (eg Maba -ko ), the plural -forming suffix -an that intransitivity / passivity indicating -a ( eg Teso -o) and the postulated by him hypothetical plural suffix -r, (eg Teso -r), which he sees in the pronouns and yer wor.

The most striking similarities with Mande, the Creissels lists, the pronouns of the third person singular of a ( Pan -Mande a) and plural i ( Pan -Mande i or e), the demonstrative pronouns where ( Manding o, where "this" ) and no are ( no Soninke, other Mande na "there" ), the negation occurring in a number of Manding dialects na, the negative mana Perfect ( cf. Manding MA, the ), the subjunctive ma ( Manding Maa ), the copula ti ( Bisa ti, Manding de / le ), the verbal conjunction ka ( Manding kà ), the Resultativsuffix -ri ( Mandinka -ri, Bambara -li for the course nouns), the ethnonymische suffix -NCE ( Soninka Beverages, Madinka - nka ), the Ordnungssuffix - anta ( Soninke nth ), the endi - Kausalsuffix ( Soninke, Madinka - ndi ) and the postposition ra "in" ( Manding lá, Soso ra).