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79-502: Old Nubian, according to historical linguists, was the spoken language of the oldest inhabitants of the Nile valley. Adams, Berhens, Griffith and Bechhause-Gerst agree that Nile Nubian has its origins in the Nile valley. Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages and appears to have been adopted from the 10th–11th century as the main language for the civil and religious administration of Makuria. Besides Old Nubian, Koine Greek

158-618: A Malagasy dialect called Bushi is also spoken in Mayotte . The ancestors of the Malagasy people migrated to Madagascar around 1,500 years ago from Southeast Asia, more specifically the island of Borneo. The origins of how they arrived to Madagascar remains a mystery, however the Austronesians are known for their seafaring culture. Despite the geographical isolation, Malagasy still has strong resemblance to Barito languages especially

237-553: A broad sense). Some occur as independent noun phrases: mine , yours , hers , ours , theirs . An example is: Those clothes are mine . Others act as a determiner and must accompany a noun: my , your , her , our , your , their , as in: I lost my wallet. ( His and its can fall into either category, although its is nearly always found in the second.) Those of the second type have traditionally also been described as possessive adjectives , and in more modern terminology as possessive determiners . The term "possessive pronoun"

316-425: A determiner, rather than the noun that follows it, is taken to be the head of the phrase. Cross-linguistically, it seems as though pronouns share 3 distinct categories: point of view, person, and number. The breadth of each subcategory however tends to differ among languages. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora , where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on another referential element. The referent of

395-491: A direct relationship to an antecedent. The following sentences give examples of particular types of pronouns used with antecedents: Some other types, such as indefinite pronouns , are usually used without antecedents. Relative pronouns are used without antecedents in free relative clauses . Even third-person personal pronouns are sometimes used without antecedents ("unprecursed") – this applies to special uses such as dummy pronouns and generic they , as well as cases where

474-444: A direct relationship with its referent. This is called a C-command relationship. For instance, we see that John cut himself is grammatical, but Himself cut John is not, despite having identical arguments, since himself , the reflexive, must be lower in structure to John, its referent. Additionally, we see examples like John said that Mary cut himself are not grammatical because there is an intermediary noun, Mary , that disallows

553-655: A factor that can promote African unity. Language is not static in Africa any more than on other continents. In addition to the (likely modest) impact of borders, there are also cases of dialect levelling (such as in Igbo and probably many others), koinés (such as N'Ko and possibly Runyakitara ) and emergence of new dialects (such as Sheng ). In some countries, there are official efforts to develop standardized language versions. There are also many less widely spoken languages that may be considered endangered languages . Of

632-455: A language on either side of a border (especially when the official languages are different), for example, in orthographic standards. Some notable cross-border languages include Berber (which stretches across much of North Africa and some parts of West Africa), Kikongo (that stretches across northern Angola, western and coastal Democratic Republic of the Congo, and western and coastal Republic of

711-440: A matter of controversy, with some scholars proposing it as nominative case or subjective marker. Both the distribution of the morpheme and comparative evidence from Meroitic, however, point to a use as determiner. Old Nubian has a nominative-accusative case system with four structural cases determining the core arguments in the sentence, as well as a number of lexical cases for adverbial phrases . The most common plural marker

790-545: A nonsingular exclusive pronoun to refer to a group, the speaker will assess whether or not the members of the group belong to a common class of gender or kinship. If all of the members of the referent group are male, the MASCULINE form will be selected; if at least one is female, the FEMININE is selected, but if all the members are in a sibling-like kinship relation, a third SIBLING form is selected. In Arabana-Wangkangurru ,

869-448: A noun phrase (or determiner phrase), normally in a context where it is clear which noun it is replacing. For example, in a context in which hats are being talked about, the red one means "the red hat", and the ones we bought means "the hats we bought". The prop-word thus functions somewhat similarly to a pronoun, except that a pronoun usually takes the place of a whole noun (determiner) phrase (for example, "the red hat" may be replaced by

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948-404: A series of question words based on the root ⲥ̄ . The Old Nubian verbal system is by far the most complex part of its grammar, allowing for valency , tense , mood , aspect , person and pluractionality to be expressed on it through a variety of suffixes. The main distinction between nominal and verbal predicates in a main clause versus a subordinate clause is indicated by the presence of

1027-618: A similar cultural background. Some widespread phonetic features include: Sounds that are relatively uncommon in African languages include uvular consonants , diphthongs and front rounded vowels Tonal languages are found throughout the world but are especially common in Africa - in fact, there are far more tonal than non-tonal languages in Africa. Both the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoi-San phyla are fully tonal. The large majority of

1106-436: A single class, sometimes called "determiner-pronoun", or regarding determiners as a subclass of pronouns or vice versa. The distinction may be considered to be one of subcategorization or valency , rather like the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs – determiners take a noun phrase complement like transitive verbs do, while pronouns do not. This is consistent with the determiner phrase viewpoint, whereby

1185-543: A slightly different set of personal pronouns, shown in the table. The difference is entirely in the second person. Though one would rarely find these older forms used in recent literature, they are nevertheless considered part of Modern English. In English, kin terms like "mother", "uncle", "cousin" are a distinct word class from pronouns; however many Australian Aboriginal languages have more elaborated systems of encoding kinship in language including special kin forms of pronouns. In Murrinh-patha , for example, when selecting

1264-451: A specialized restricted sense) rather than as pronominal elements. Under binding theory, specific principles apply to different sets of pronouns. In English, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns must adhere to Principle A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal, such as "each other") must be bound in its governing category (roughly, the clause). Therefore, in syntactic structure it must be lower in structure (it must have an antecedent ) and have

1343-658: A treatise on Greek grammar attributed to Dionysius Thrax and dating from the 2nd century BC. The pronoun is described there as "a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person." Pronouns continued to be regarded as a part of speech in Latin grammar (the Latin term being pronomen , from which the English name – through Middle French – ultimately derives), and thus in the European tradition generally. Because of

1422-454: A wide variety of sign languages , many of which are language isolates. Around a hundred languages are widely used for interethnic communication. These include Arabic , Swahili , Amharic , Oromo , Igbo , Somali , Hausa , Manding , Fulani and Yoruba , which are spoken as a second (or non-first) language by millions of people. Although many African languages are used on the radio, in newspapers and in primary-school education, and some of

1501-458: Is -ⲅⲟⲩ , which always precedes case marking. There are a few irregular plurals, such as: Furthermore, there are traces of separate animate plural forms in -ⲣⲓ , which are textually limited to a few roots, e.g. Old Nubian has several sets of pronouns and subject clitics are the following, of which the following are the main ones: There are two demonstrative pronouns : Interrogative words include ⳟⲁⲉⲓ "who?"; ⲙⲛ̄ "what?"; and

1580-482: Is a list of language isolates and otherwise unclassified languages in Africa, from Vossen & Dimmendaal (2020:434): Many African countries have national sign languages, such as Algerian Sign Language , Tunisian Sign Language , Ethiopian Sign Language . Other sign languages are restricted to small areas or single villages, such as Adamorobe Sign Language in Ghana . Tanzania has seven, one for each of its schools for

1659-497: Is a table displaying the number of speakers of given languages within Africa: Below is a list of the major languages of Africa by region, family and total number of primary language speakers in millions. Pronoun In linguistics and grammar , a pronoun ( glossed PRO ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase . Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of

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1738-478: Is a term of convenience covering some 30 languages spoken by around 300,000–400,000 people. There are five Khoisan families that have not been shown to be related to each other: Khoe , Tuu and Kx'a , which are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana , as well as Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania , which are language isolates . A striking feature of Khoisan languages, and the reason they are often grouped together,

1817-509: Is generally accepted by linguists, though a few question the inclusion of Mande and Dogon , and there is no conclusive evidence for the inclusion of Ubangian . Several languages spoken in Africa belong to language families concentrated or originating outside the African continent. Malagasy belongs to the Austronesian languages and is the westernmost branch of the family. It is the national and co-official language of Madagascar , and

1896-663: Is grammatical because the two co-referents, John and him are separated structurally by Mary . This is why a sentence like John cut him where him refers to John is ungrammatical. The type of binding that applies to subsets of pronouns varies cross-linguistically. For instance, in German linguistics, pronouns can be split into two distinct categories — personal pronouns and d-pronouns. Although personal pronouns act identically to English personal pronouns (i.e. follow Principle B), d-pronouns follow yet another principle, Principle C, and function similarly to nouns in that they cannot have

1975-476: Is important in Central Africa. Important South African languages are Sotho , Tswana , Pedi , Venda , Tsonga , Swazi , Southern Ndebele , Zulu , Xhosa and Afrikaans . French, English, and Portuguese are important languages in Africa due to colonialism. About 320 million, 240 million and 35 million Africans, respectively, speak them as either native or secondary languages. Portuguese has become

2054-446: Is meant. In reference to a person, one may use who (subject), whom (object) or whose (possessive); for example, Who did that? In colloquial speech, whom is generally replaced by who . English non-personal interrogative pronouns ( which and what ) have only one form. In English and many other languages (e.g. French and Czech ), the sets of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical. Compare English: Who

2133-405: Is perhaps the most likely to be an isolate. Less-well investigated languages include Irimba , Luo , Mawa , Rer Bare (possibly Bantu languages), Bete (evidently Jukunoid), Bung (unclear), Kujarge (evidently Chadic), Lufu (Jukunoid), Meroitic (possibly Afroasiatic), Oropom (possibly spurious) and Weyto (evidently Cushitic). Several of these are extinct, and adequate comparative data

2212-414: Is sometimes restricted to the first type. Both types replace possessive noun phrases. As an example, Their crusade to capture our attention could replace The advertisers' crusade to capture our attention. Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself, for example, John cut himself . In English they all end in -self or -selves and must refer to a noun phrase elsewhere in

2291-417: Is that? (interrogative) and I know the woman who came (relative). In some other languages, interrogative pronouns and indefinite pronouns are frequently identical; for example, Standard Chinese 什么 shénme means "what?" as well as "something" or "anything". Though the personal pronouns described above are the current English pronouns, Early Modern English (as used by Shakespeare, for example) use

2370-908: Is the Arab expansion in the 7th century, which led to the extension of Arabic from its homeland in Asia, into much of North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Trade languages are another age-old phenomenon in the African linguistic landscape. Cultural and linguistic innovations spread along trade routes and languages of peoples dominant in trade developed into languages of wider communication ( lingua franca ). Of particular importance in this respect are Berber (North and West Africa), Jula (western West Africa), Fulfulde (West Africa), Hausa (West Africa), Lingala (Congo), Swahili (Southeast Africa), Somali (Horn of Africa) and Arabic (North Africa and Horn of Africa). After gaining independence, many African countries, in

2449-501: Is their use of click consonants . Some neighbouring Bantu languages (notably Xhosa and Zulu ) have clicks as well, but these were adopted from Khoisan languages. The Khoisan languages are also tonal . Due partly to its multilingualism and its colonial past, a substantial proportion of the world's creole languages are to be found in Africa. Some are based on Indo-European languages (e.g. Krio from English in Sierra Leone and

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2528-432: Is thus unlikely to be forthcoming. Hombert & Philippson (2009) list a number of African languages that have been classified as language isolates at one point or another. Many of these are simply unclassified, but Hombert & Philippson believe Africa has about twenty language families, including isolates. Beside the possibilities listed above, there are: Roger Blench notes a couple additional possibilities: Below

2607-487: Is uncertain. The family's most extensive branch, the Semitic languages (including Arabic , Amharic and Hebrew among others), is the only branch of Afroasiatic that is spoken outside Africa. Some of the most widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include Arabic (a Semitic language, and a recent arrival from West Asia), Somali (Cushitic), Berber (Berber), Hausa (Chadic), Amharic (Semitic) and Oromo (Cushitic). Of

2686-548: Is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect ) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue ), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families , among which the largest are: There are several other small families and language isolates , as well as creoles and languages that have yet to be classified . In addition, Africa has

2765-574: The Koman , Gumuz and Kadu branches. Some of the better known Nilo-Saharan languages are Kanuri , Fur , Songhay , Nobiin and the widespread Nilotic family , which includes the Luo , Dinka and Maasai . Most Nilo-Saharan languages are tonal , as are Niger-Congo languages. The Niger–Congo languages constitute the largest language family spoken in West Africa and perhaps the world in terms of

2844-464: The Kordofanian languages of south-central Sudan , was proposed in the 1950s by Joseph Greenberg . Today, linguists often use "Niger–Congo" to refer to this entire family, including Kordofanian as a subfamily. One reason for this is that it is not clear whether Kordofanian was the first branch to diverge from rest of Niger–Congo. Mande has been claimed to be equally or more divergent. Niger–Congo

2923-643: The Ma'anyan language of southern Borneo. With more than 20 million speakers, Malagasy is one of the most widely spoken of the Austronesian languages. Afrikaans is Indo-European , as is most of the vocabulary of most African creole languages . Afrikaans evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland ( Hollandic dialect ) spoken by the mainly Dutch settlers of what is now South Africa , where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in

3002-692: The Tanzanian Sign languages used in Tanzania . Throughout the long multilingual history of the African continent, African languages have been subject to phenomena like language contact, language expansion, language shift and language death. A case in point is the Bantu expansion , in which Bantu-speaking peoples expanded over most of Sub-Equatorial Africa , intermingling with Khoi-San speaking peoples from much of Southeast Africa and Southern Africa and other peoples from Central Africa . Another example

3081-488: The parts of speech , but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Sub-types include personal and possessive pronouns , reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns , relative and interrogative pronouns , and indefinite pronouns . The use of pronouns often involves anaphora , where

3160-489: The 1 billion Africans (in 2009), about 17 percent speak an Arabic dialect . About 10 percent speak Swahili , the lingua franca of Southeast Africa; about 5 percent speak a Berber dialect; and about 5 percent speak Hausa , which serves as a lingua franca in much of the Sahel. Other large West African languages are Yoruba , Igbo , Akan and Fula . Major Horn of Africa languages are Somali , Amharic and Oromo . Lingala

3239-701: The Congo), Somali (stretches across most of the Horn of Africa), Swahili (spoken in the African Great Lakes region), Fula (in the Sahel and West Africa) and Luo (in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan). Some prominent Africans such as former Malian president and former Chairman of the African Commission , Alpha Oumar Konaré , have referred to cross-border languages as

Old Nubian - Misplaced Pages Continue

3318-985: The Deaf, all of which are discouraged. Not much is known, since little has been published on these languages Sign language systems extant in Africa include the Paget Gorman Sign System used in Namibia and Angola , the Sudanese Sign languages used in Sudan and South Sudan , the Arab Sign languages used across the Arab Mideast, the Francosign languages used in Francophone Africa and other areas such as Ghana and Tunisia , and

3397-821: The Khartoum Mesolithic/Neolithic cultures. Niger-Congo languages are correlated with the west and central African hoe-based farming traditions and the Khoisan languages are matched with the south and southeastern Wilton culture . Afroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa , the Horn of Africa , Western Asia and parts of the Sahel . There are approximately 375 Afroasiatic languages spoken by over 400 million people. The main subfamilies of Afroasiatic are Berber , Chadic , Cushitic , Omotic , Egyptian and Semitic . The Afroasiatic Urheimat

3476-607: The Niger–Congo languages are also tonal. Tonal languages are also found in the Omotic, Chadic and South & East Cushitic branches of Afroasiatic. The most common type of tonal system opposes two tone levels, High (H) and Low (L). Contour tones do occur, and can often be analysed as two or more tones in succession on a single syllable. Tone melodies play an important role, meaning that it is often possible to state significant generalizations by separating tone sequences ("melodies") from

3555-606: The branches must have undergone major restructuring since diverging from their common ancestor. This hypothetical family would reach an expanse that stretches from the Nile Valley to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo , with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River as a geographic outlier. The inclusion of the Songhay languages is questionable, and doubts have been raised over

3634-562: The continent, such as Old Persian and Greek in Egypt, Latin and Vandalic in North Africa and Modern Persian in the Horn of Africa . The three small Khoisan families of southern Africa have not been shown to be closely related to any other major language family. In addition, there are various other families that have not been demonstrated to belong to one of these families. The classifications below follow Glottolog . Khoisan

3713-538: The continent: Afroasiatic , or Niger–Congo . Another hundred belong to smaller families such as Ubangian , Nilotic , Saharan , and the various families previously grouped under the umbrella term Khoisan . In addition, the languages of Africa include several unclassified languages and sign languages . The earliest Afroasiatic languages are associated with the Capsian culture , the Saharan languages are linked with

3792-768: The course of the 18th century, including the loss of verbal conjugation (save for 5 modal verbs), as well as grammatical case and gender. Most Afrikaans speakers live in South Africa . In Namibia it is the lingua franca . Overall 15 to 20 million people are estimated to speak Afrikaans. Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans , English , French , Italian , Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, generally as lingua francas . ( See African French and African Portuguese .) Additionally, languages like French, and Portuguese have become native languages in various countries. French has become native in

3871-654: The first two deriving from the Meroitic alphabet . The presence of these characters suggest that although the first written evidence of Old Nubian dates to the 8th century, the script must have already been developed in the 6th century, following the collapse of the Meroitic state. Additionally, Old Nubian used the variant ⳝ for the Coptic letter ϭ . The characters ⲍ, ⲝ/ϩ ⲭ, ⲯ only appear in Greek loanwords. Gemination

3950-404: The fusing of subject markers and TAM/polarity auxiliaries into what are known as tense pronouns are more common in auxiliary verb constructions in African languages than in most other parts of the world. Quite often, only one term is used for both animal and meat; the word nama or nyama for animal/meat is particularly widespread in otherwise widely divergent African languages. The following

4029-421: The larger ones are considered national languages , only a few are official at the national level. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most official languages at the national level tend to be colonial languages such as French, Portuguese, or English. The African Union declared 2006 the "Year of African Languages". Most languages natively spoken in Africa belong to one of the two large language families that dominate

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4108-793: The largest group of pronouns, refer to one or more unspecified persons or things. One group in English includes compounds of some- , any- , every- and no- with -thing , -one and -body , for example: Anyone can do that. Another group, including many , more , both , and most , can appear alone or followed by of . In addition, Relative pronouns in English include who , whom , whose , what , which and that . They rely on an antecedent, and refer back to people or things previously mentioned: People who smoke should quit now. They are used in relative clauses . Relative pronouns can also be used as complementizers . Relative pronouns can be used in an interrogative setting as interrogative pronouns. Interrogative pronouns ask which person or thing

4187-542: The main language of the Central African Republic ); while in Cameroon a creole based on French, English and local African languages known as Camfranglais has started to become popular. A fair number of unclassified languages are reported in Africa. Many remain unclassified simply for lack of data; among the better-investigated ones that continue to resist easy classification are: Of these, Jalaa

4266-437: The many different syntactic roles that they play, pronouns are less likely to be a single word class in more modern approaches to grammar. Linguists in particular have trouble classifying pronouns in a single category, and some do not agree that pronouns substitute nouns or noun categories. Certain types of pronouns are often identical or similar in form to determiners with related meaning; some English examples are given in

4345-453: The meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent . For example, in the sentence That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat , the meaning of the pronoun he is dependent on its antecedent, that poor man . The adjective form of the word "pronoun" is " pronominal ". A pronominal is also a word or phrase that acts as a pronoun. For example, in That's not the one I wanted , the phrase

4424-433: The national language of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe, and Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique. Some linguistic features are particularly common among languages spoken in Africa, whereas others are less common. Such shared traits probably are not due to a common origin of all African languages. Instead, some may be due to language contact (resulting in borrowing) and specific idioms and phrases may be due to

4503-464: The number of languages. One of its salient features is an elaborate noun class system with grammatical concord . A large majority of languages of this family are tonal such as Yoruba and Igbo , Akan and Ewe language . A major branch of Niger–Congo languages is the Bantu phylum, which has a wider speech area than the rest of the family (see Niger–Congo B (Bantu) in the map above). The Niger–Kordofanian language family, joining Niger–Congo with

4582-500: The one (containing the prop-word one ) is a pronominal. Pronoun is a category of words. A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word , phrase , clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. In English, pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns. Examples [1 & 2] are pronouns and pro-forms. In [1],

4661-978: The predicate marker -ⲁ . The major categories, listing from the root of the verb to the right, are as follows: This can be indicated by a series of subject clitics, which are obligatory only in certain grammatical contexts. They are generally absent when an overt subject is present in the clause, unless the subject has the topic marker -ⲉⲓⲟⲛ. ⲕⲧ̅ⲕⲁ kit-ka stone- ACC ⲅⲉⲗⲅⲉⲗⲟ̅ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛⲛⲟⲛ gelgel-os-ou-an-non roll- PFV - PST1 - 3PL - TOP ⲓ̈ⲏ̅ⲥⲟⲩⲥⲓ iēsousi Jesus ⲙⲁⳡⲁⲛ mañan eye. DU ⲧⲣⲓⲕⲁ· tri-ka both- ACC ⲇⲟⲗⲗⲉ dolle high ⲡⲟⲗⲅⲁⲣⲁ polgar-a raise. CAUS - PRED [ⲡⲉⲥⲥⲛⲁ·] pes-s-n-a speak- PST2 - 2 / 3 / SG - PRED ⲡⲁⲡⲟ pap-o father- VOC ⲥ̅ⲕⲉⲗⲙ̅ⲙⲉ iskel-im-m-e thank- AFF - PRS - 1SG . PRED ⲉⲕ̅[ⲕⲁ] Languages of Africa The number of languages natively spoken in Africa

4740-399: The pronoun it "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the relative pronoun who stands in for "the people". Examples [3 & 4] are pronouns but not pro-forms. In [3], the interrogative pronoun who does not stand in for anything. Similarly, in [4], it is a dummy pronoun , one that does not stand in for anything. No other word can function there with

4819-552: The pronoun "it".) Finally, in [5 & 6], there are pro-forms that are not pronouns. In [5], did so is a verb phrase that stands in for "helped", inflected from to help stated earlier in the sentence. Similarly, in [6], others is a common noun , not a pronoun, but the others probably stands in for the names of other people involved (e.g., Sho, Alana, and Ali ), all proper nouns . Pronouns ( antōnymía ) are listed as one of eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar ,

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4898-555: The pronoun is often the same as that of a preceding (or sometimes following) noun phrase, called the antecedent of the pronoun. The grammatical behavior of certain types of pronouns, and in particular their possible relationship with their antecedents, has been the focus of studies in binding , notably in the Chomskyan government and binding theory . In this binding context, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns in English (such as himself and each other ) are referred to as anaphors (in

4977-620: The referent is implied by the context. English pronouns have often traditionally been classified as different from nouns, but at least one modern grammar defines them as a subclass of nouns. English personal pronouns have a number of different syntactic contexts (Subject, Object, Possessive, Reflexive) and many features: English also has other pronoun types, including demonstrative, relative, indefinite, and interrogative pronouns: Personal pronouns may be classified by person , number , gender and case . English has three persons (first, second and third) and two numbers (singular and plural); in

5056-609: The remains of archbishop Timotheos suggest, however, that Greek and Coptic continued to be used into the late 14th century, by which time Arabic was also in widespread use. The script in which nearly all Old Nubian texts have been written is a slanted uncial variant of the Coptic alphabet , originating from the White Monastery in Sohag . The alphabet included three additional letters ⳡ /ɲ/ and ⳣ /w/ , and ⳟ /ŋ/ ,

5135-695: The same clause. Reciprocal pronouns refer to a reciprocal relationship ( each other , one another ). They must refer to a noun phrase in the same clause. An example in English is: They do not like each other . In some languages, the same forms can be used as both reflexive and reciprocal pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns (in English, this , that and their plurals these , those ) often distinguish their targets by pointing or some other indication of position; for example, I'll take these . They may also be anaphoric , depending on an earlier expression for context, for example, A kid actor would try to be all sweet, and who needs that ? Indefinite pronouns,

5214-414: The same meaning; we do not say "the sky is raining" or "the weather is raining". A prop-word is a word with little or no semantic content used where grammar dictates a certain sentence member, e.g., to provide a "support" on which to hang a modifier. The word most commonly considered as a prop-word in English is one (with the plural form ones ). The prop-word one takes the place of a countable noun in

5293-664: The search for national unity, selected one language, generally the former Indo-European colonial language, to be used in government and education. However, in recent years, African countries have become increasingly supportive of maintaining linguistic diversity. Language policies that are being developed nowadays are mostly aimed at multilingualism. This presents a methodological complication when collecting data in Africa and limited literature exists. An analysis of Afrobarometer public opinion survey data of 36 countries suggested that survey interviewers and respondents could engage in various linguistic behaviors, such as code-switching during

5372-538: The segments that bear them. Tonal sandhi processes like tone spread, tone shift, downstep and downdrift are common in African languages. Widespread syntactical structures include the common use of adjectival verbs and the expression of comparison by means of a verb 'to surpass'. The Niger–Congo languages have large numbers of genders ( noun classes ) which cause agreement in verbs and other words. Case , tense and other categories may be distinguished only by tone. Auxiliary verbs are also widespread among African languages;

5451-496: The survey. Moreover, some African countries have been considering removing their official former Indo-European colonial languages, like Mali and Burkina Faso which removed French as an official language in 2024. The colonial borders established by European powers following the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885 divided a great many ethnic groups and African language speaking communities. This can cause divergence of

5530-434: The table. This observation has led some linguists, such as Paul Postal , to regard pronouns as determiners that have had their following noun or noun phrase deleted. (Such patterning can even be claimed for certain personal pronouns; for example, we and you might be analyzed as determiners in phrases like we Brits and you tennis players .) Other linguists have taken a similar view, uniting pronouns and determiners into

5609-539: The third person singular there are also distinct pronoun forms for male, female and neuter gender. Principal forms are shown in the adjacent table. English personal pronouns have two cases, subject and object . Subject pronouns are used in subject position ( I like to eat chips, but she does not ). Object pronouns are used for the object of a verb or preposition ( John likes me but not her ). Other distinct forms found in some languages include: Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession (in

5688-441: The tones were not marked. Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \\ ( ⳹ ), which was used roughly like an English period or colon ; a slash / ( ⳺ ), which was used like a question mark ; and a double slash // ( ⳼ ), which was sometimes used to separate verses. In 2021, the first modern Nubian typeface based on the style of text written in old Nubian manuscripts called Sawarda

5767-436: The two referents from having a direct relationship. On the other hand, personal pronouns (such as him or them ) must adhere to Principle B: a pronoun must be free (i.e., not bound) within its governing category (roughly, the clause). This means that although the pronouns can have a referent, they cannot have a direct relationship with the referent where the referent selects the pronoun. For instance, John said Mary cut him

5846-682: The urban areas of the DRC, and Gabon. German was once used in Germany's colonies there from the late 1800s until World War I, when Britain and France took over and revoked German's official status. Despite this, German is still spoken in Namibia , mostly among the white population . Although it lost its official status in the 1990s, it has been redesignated as a national language. Indian languages such as Gujarati are spoken by South Asian expatriates exclusively. In earlier historical times, other Indo-European languages could be found in various parts of

5925-743: The very similar Pidgin in Nigeria , Ghana and parts of Cameroon ; Cape Verdean Creole in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau Creole in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal , all from Portuguese; Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles and Mauritian Creole in Mauritius , both from French); some are based on Arabic (e.g. Juba Arabic in the southern Sudan , or Nubi in parts of Uganda and Kenya ); some are based on local languages (e.g. Sango ,

6004-540: The world's surviving language families, Afroasiatic has the longest written history, as both the Akkadian language of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egyptian are members. Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed grouping of some one hundred diverse languages. Genealogical linkage between these languages has failed to be conclusively demonstrated, and support for the proposal is sparse among linguists. The languages share some unusual morphology , but if they are related, most of

6083-413: Was indicated by writing double consonants; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones. Old Nubian featured two digraphs : ⲟⲩ /u, uː/ and ⲉⲓ /i, iː/ . A diaeresis over ⲓ ( ⲓ̈ ) was used to indicate the semivowel /j/ . In addition, Old Nubian featured a supralinear stroke, which could indicate: Modern Nobiin is a tonal language; if Old Nubian was tonal as well,

6162-491: Was released designed by Hatim-Arbaab Eujayl for a series of educational books teaching Nobiin. Old Nubian has no gender . The noun consists of a stem to which derivational suffixes may be added. Plural markers, case markers, postpositions , and the determiner are added on the entire noun phrase , which may also comprise adjectives , possessors , and relative clauses . Old Nubian has one definite determiner -(ⲓ)ⲗ . The precise function of this morpheme has been

6241-453: Was widely used, especially in religious contexts, while Coptic mainly predominates in funerary inscriptions. Over time, more and more Old Nubian began to appear in both secular and religious documents ( including the Bible ), while several grammatical aspects of Greek, including the case, agreement, gender, and tense morphology underwent significant erosion. The consecration documents found with

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