Sudanic languages

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

In early twentieth century classification of African languages, Sudanic languages was a generic term for African languages spoken in the Sahel belt from Ethiopia in the east to Senegal in the west. The grouping was based on geographic and loose typological grounds, and included many languages now classified as Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo. One of its proponents was the German linguist Carl Meinhof. Meinhof had been working on the Bantu languages, which have an elaborate noun class system, and he labeled all languages that lacked such a noun class system Sudansprachen.

Westermann, pupil of Carl Meinhof, carried out comparative linguistic research on the then Sudanic languages during the first half of the twentieth century. In his 1911 study he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West' Sudanic, roughly comparable to today's distinction of Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. His 1927 collaboration with Hermann Baumann was devoted to the historical reconstruction of the West Sudanic branch. He compared his results with Meinhof's Proto-Bantu reconstructions but did not state the obvious conclusion that they were related, perhaps out of respect for his teacher. French linguists like Delafosse and Homburger, not hindered by such concerns, were quite explicit about the unity of Sudanic and Bantu, mainly on the basis of synchronic lexicostatistical data . In his 1935 'Character und Einteilung der Sudansprachen', Westermann conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic.

Joseph Greenberg incorporated West Sudanic in his Niger-Congo and renamed it Volta-Congo. He treated East Sudanic as a different language family called Nilo-Saharan. The term 'Sudanic languages' is obsolete as of today.