Languages of Sudan
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| Languages of Sudan | |
|---|---|
 Bilingual Arabic–English street sign inKhartoum | |
| Official | Arabic,English |
| Regional | Beja,Nubian,Fur |
| Vernacular | Sudanese Arabic |
| Minority | Masalit,Zaghawa,Languages of the Nuba Mountains |
| Foreign | Hausa,Fula,Kanuri,English |
| Signed | Sudanese sign languages |
| Keyboard layout | |
| Part ofa serieson the |
| Culture of Sudan |
|---|
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| Languages |
| Cuisine |
| Sport |
Sudanis a multilingual country dominated bySudanese Arabic.In the 2005constitution of the Republic of Sudan,the officiallanguages of SudanareLiterary Arabicand English.
Languages[edit]
Most languages spoken in Africa fall into fourlanguage families.[1]Three of them—Afro-Asiatic,Niger-Kordofanian,andNilo-Saharan—are represented in Sudan.[1]Each is divided into groups that are in turn subdivided into sets of closely related languages.[1]Two or more major groups of each of the three families are present in Sudan, historically both a north–south and an east–west migration crossroads.[1]There are a total of 81 languages spoken in Sudan.[2]
The most widely spoken language in Sudan isArabic,a member of theSemiticbranch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, represented by theSudanese dialect.[1]Cushitic,another major branch of Afro-Asiatic, is represented byBedawiye(with several dialects), spoken by the largely nomadicBeja people.[1][3]Nevertheless, some of them speak the SemiticTigre language.Chadic,a third Afro-Asiatic branch, is represented by its most important single language,Hausa,aWest Africantongue used inNigeriaby theHausapeople and employed by many other West Africans in Sudan as alingua franca.[1] Several lingua francas have emerged, and many peoples have become genuinely multilingual, fluent in a native language spoken at home, a lingua franca, and perhaps other languages.[1]Arabic, however, has several different forms, and not all who master one are able to use another.[1]Among the varieties noted by scholars areclassical Arabic,the language of theQuran,not a widespread spoken language and mostly used in Islamic rites and poetry.[1]Although some Muslims might become acquainted with classical Arabic in the course of rudimentary religious schooling, very few except the most educated know it by rote.[1]
Modern Standard Arabic,derived from classical Arabic, is used by the educated in travel outside the country.[1]Then there are at least two kinds of colloquial Arabic in Sudan—that spoken in roughly the eastern half of the country and known as Sudanese or Omdurmani colloquial Arabic, and that spoken in Western Sudan, closely akin to the colloquial Arabic spoken inChad.[1]There are other colloquial forms.[1]
Modern Standard Arabic is in principle the same everywhere in the Arab world and generally permits communication among educated persons whose mother tongue is one or another form of colloquial Arabic.[1]It has been the language used in Sudan's central government, the press, Sudan television, and Radio Omdurman.[1]The latter also broadcast in classical Arabic.[1]One observer, writing in the early 1970s, noted that Arabic speakers (and others who had acquired the language informally) in western Sudan found it easier to understand the Chadian colloquial Arabic used by Chad Radio than the Modern Standard Arabic used by Radio Omdurman.[1]This may also be the case elsewhere in rural Sudan, where villagers and nomads speak a local dialect of Arabic.[1]
Niger-Kordofanian is first divided into Niger–Congo and Kordofanian.[1]The widespreadNiger–Congolanguage group includes many divisions and subdivisions of languages.[1]Represented in Sudan areAzandeand several other tongues of theAdamawa-Eastern language division, andFulaniof the West Atlantic division.[1]The Kordofanian stock comprises only 30 to 40 languages spoken in a limited area of Sudan—theNuba Mountainsand their environs.[1]
The designation of a Nilo-Saharan superstock has not been fully accepted bylinguists,and its constituent groups and subgroups are not firmly fixed, in part because many of the languages have not been well studied.[1]Assuming the validity of thislanguage familyand its internal divisions, then 10 of its 12 major divisions and many of their subdivisions are well represented in Sudan, where roughly 75 languages, well over half of those named in the 1955–56 census, could be identified as Nilo-Saharan.[1]Many of these languages are only used by small groups of people.[1]Only six or seven of them were spoken by 1 percent or more of Sudan's 1956 population.[1]Perhaps another dozen were the home languages of 0.5 to 1 percent.[1]Included among Nilo-Saharan languages areMasalitin North Darfur; various Nubian dialects ofNorthern Sudan;and Jieng (Dinka) and Naadh (Nuer) inSouthern Sudan.[1]
Many other languages are spoken by a few thousand or even a few hundred people.[1] Sudan also has multipleregional sign languages,which are notmutually intelligible.By 2009 a proposal for a unified language had been worked out, but is not widely known.[4]
Language policies[edit]
Under the 1998 constitution, only Arabic was the official language.[5][1]Nonetheless, English was acknowledged as the principal language in the South into the 1990s.[1]It was also the chief language at theUniversity of Khartoumand was the language of secondary schools even in the North before 1969.[1]In the early 1970s in the South, the first two years ofprimary schoolwere taught in the local language.[1]Thereafter, throughsecondary school,either Arabic or English could be the medium of instruction (English and Arabic were regarded as of equal importance); the language not used as a medium was taught as a subject.[1]At the time when this option was established, roughly half the general secondary schools (equivalent to grades seven through nine) were conducted in Arabic and half in English in what were thenBahr al-GhazalandAlIstiwaiStates.[1]
The new policy for higher education announced by the Sudanese government in 1990, however, dictated that Arabic would be the language of instruction in all institutions of higher learning (see Education in Sudan).[1]This policy was reversed by provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 that were incorporated into Sudan's Interim National Constitution.[1]These provisions established both Arabic and English as official working languages of the national government and as the languages of instruction in higher education.[1]The constitution declared further that "all indigenous languages of the Sudan are national languages and shall be respected, developed, and promoted", and it allowed any legislative body below the national level to adopt any other national language(s) as additional official working language(s) within that body's jurisdiction.[1]These changes began working their way into public life and into secondary and higher education.[1]
Literacy and education[edit]
Theliteracy rateis 70.2% of total population, male: 79.6%, female: 60.8%.[6]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzaaabacadaeafagahaiajakalamanaoBechtold, Peter K. (2015)."Languages"(PDF).In Berry, LaVerle (ed.).Sudan: a country study(5th ed.). Washington, D.C.:Federal Research Division,Library of Congress.pp. 77–79.ISBN978-0-8444-0750-0.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.Though published in 2015, this work covers events in the whole of Sudan (including present-day South Sudan) until the 2011 secession of South Sudan.{{cite encyclopedia}}:CS1 maint: postscript (link) - ^"Languages of Sudan".Ethnologue.Retrieved11 March2024.
- ^"بجا".المعرفة(in Arabic).Retrieved2021-05-11.
- ^Karen Andrae, 2009.Language for inclusion (Sign language in Sudan)
- ^Leclerc, Jacques.L'aménagement linguistique dans le monde,"Soudan"Archived2012-10-23 at theWayback Machine
- ^"The World Factbook".cia.gov.Retrieved13 August2015.
