Biu–Mandara languages
languages of the Afro-Asiatic family
The Biu–Mandara or Central Chadic languages of the Afro-Asiatic family are spoken in Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.
A reconstruction of Proto-Central Chadic has been proposed by Gravina (2014).
Languages
Gravina (2014)
Gravina (2014) classifies Central Chadic as follows, as part of a reconstruction of the proto-language. Letters and numbers in parentheses correspond to branches in previous classifications. The greatest changes are breaking up and reassigning the languages of the old Mafa branch (A.5) and Mandage (Kotoko) branch (B.1).
Jilbe was not classified, as no sources were available.
Blench (2006)
The branches of Biu–Mandara traditionally go by either names or letters and numbers in an outline format. Blench (2006) organizes them as follows:
Newman (1977)
Central Chadic classification per Newman (1977):
Names and locations (Nigeria)
Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations (in Nigeria only) from Blench (2019).
South
North
Numerals
Comparison of numerals in individual languages:
Proto Language
The phonology of Proto-Central Chadic consists of 31 consonants, three vowels and a morpheme-level palatalization prosody. The 3 vowel phonemes are /a/, /i/ and /ɨ/.
“Biu–Mandara languages” enters the record as languages of the Afro-Asiatic family. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mandara, languages and Afro-Asiatic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Biu–Mandara languages” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.