Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; ) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.
Masalit, known as the Massalat, moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.
Phonology
Vowels FrontCentralBackCloseClose-midOpen-midOpen
Consonants LabialDental/AlveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasalStop/AffricateFricative()()TrillLateralApproximant
It has been stated that occasional click sounds and may occur, however; they are considered to be rare. Sounds can occur as geminated . Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels. only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin. is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels. Sounds only occur in word-initial position.
Sociolects The Masalit language has two sociolects: "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative grammar "Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from Sudanese Arabic, the regional lingua franca and language of education.
References
Further reading
External links The Lost Languages, Found in New York - NYTimes.com