Kanuri ( / k ə ˈ n ʊər i / ) is a Saharan dialect continuum of the Nilo–Saharan language family spoken by the Kanuri and Kanembu peoples in Nigeria , Niger , Chad and Cameroon , as well as by a diaspora community residing in Sudan .
108-468: Lake Chad ( Arabic : بحيرة تشاد , Kanuri : Sádǝ , French : Lac Tchad ) is an endorheic freshwater lake located at the junction of four countries: Nigeria , Niger , Chad , and Cameroon in western and central Africa respectively, with a catchment area in excess of 1,000,000 km (390,000 sq mi). It is an important wetland ecosystem in West-Central Africa. The lakeside
216-543: A pottery culture known as Gajiganna had emerged, initially as pastoralists, but, starting around 1500 BC, living in settled hamlets at the side of the lake. The archaeological discovery revealed wild grasses, mostly of the tribe Paniceae , and wild rice together with the earliest domesticated Pearl millet in the Lake Chad region, dating to 1200–1000 cal BC . One of the oldest domesticated Pearl millet in West Africa
324-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
432-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
540-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
648-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
756-691: A local lingua franca , its usage has declined in recent decades. Most first-language speakers speak Hausa or Arabic as a second language. Kanuri is spoken mainly in lowlands of the Chad Basin , with speakers in Cameroon , Chad , Niger , Nigeria , Sudan and Libya . The Kanuri region in Nigeria consists of Borno State and Yobe State . Some other states such as Jigawa , Gombe and Bauchi are also dominated by Kanuri people, but they are not included in this region. Cities and towns where Kanuri
864-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
972-408: A negative impact on the production of these products, and the explosive growth of cattle herds has exacerbated this impact. Cattle are the most important livestock raised, as well as poultry , goats , sheep , camels , horses , and donkeys . The animal husbandry was severely affected by the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. Fishing has traditionally been the most important economic activity for
1080-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1188-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
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#17327652753231296-685: A sharp decrease in the amount of water entering the lake. The average annual inflow of the Chari River and the Logone River from 1970 to 1990 was only 55% of that from 1950 to 1970. Since the 1980s, one-third of the water in the Chari River and the Logone River has been diverted and intercepted by the Central African Republic located upstream for agricultural irrigation and hydroelectric power generation. The dams built on
1404-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
1512-521: A slight increase. From 1995 to 1998, it fluctuated within the range of 1,200 to 4,500 km (460 to 1,740 sq mi). The area once reached 5,075 square kilometres (1,959 sq mi) in 2000, and the average area of surface water from 2013 to 2016 was about 1,876 km (724 sq mi), with the largest area being 2,231 km (861 sq mi) in July 2015. Part of the Chad Basin
1620-491: A surge in the number of phytoplankton and zooplankton, allowing large fish to migrate seasonally within the watershed to feed and breed in the fertile floodplain when floods arrive. There are more than 30 million residents in the Chad Lake Basin. There are more than 70 ethnic groups around the lake, most of whom are distributed on the south bank, where the population density exceeds 100/km (260/sq mi). They rely on
1728-573: A suro Wowur abəden dəganadə ndu-a nduana-aso kartaa, gayirtə futubibema baaro, gayirta alama jiilibeso, kadigəbeso, alagəbeso, təlambeso, adinbeso, siyasabeso au rayiwu, lardə gade au kaduwu gade, kənganti, tambo au awowa laa gade anyiga samunzəna. Anyibe ngawoman nduma kəla siyasaben, kal kəntəwoben kal au daraja dunyalabe sawawuro kal kərye au lardə kamdə dəganabe sawawuro gayirtinba. Lardə shi gultənama adə kərmai kəlanzəben karga, amanaro musko lardə gadeben karga, kəlanzəlangənyi karga au sədiya kaidawa kəntəwobe laan karga yaye kal. Translation Everyone
1836-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
1944-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2052-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2160-418: Is subject–object–verb . It is typologically unusual in simultaneously having postpositions and post-nominal modifiers – for example, 'Bintu's pot' would be expressed as nje Bintu-be , 'pot Bintu-of'. Kanuri has three tones: high, low, and falling. It has an extensive system of consonantal lenition ; for example, sa- 'they' + -buma 'have eaten' → za-wuna 'they have eaten'. Traditionally
2268-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
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#17327652753232376-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
2484-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
2592-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
2700-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
2808-524: Is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under and other limitation of sovereingty. (Article 1 of
2916-600: Is located within the Chad Basin National Park in Nigeria, and the country and Cameroon have established the Lake Chad Ramsar Wetland with a total area of 8,225 km (3,176 sq mi). The wetland plants in the south mainly include cyperus papyrus , etc. Reeds mainly grow in the north where the salinity is high, and the floating plant pistia sometimes covers large areas of open water. Plants such as hyparrhenia rufa grow on
3024-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
3132-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
3240-596: Is permanently or seasonally inhabited by hundreds of species of birds such as northern shoveler , Egyptian goose and marabou stork . It is an important wintering ground for European anatidae and wading birds. There are raptors such as steppe eagle and booted eagle on the lakeshore, and more than one million ruff can be observed on the lake at one time. The once common large mammals include red-fronted gazelle , dama gazelle , patas monkey , striped hyena , cheetah and caracal , while African elephant , otter , hippopotamus , sitatunga and kob are distributed in
3348-454: Is rich in reeds and swamps, and the plain along the lake is fertile, making it an important irrigated agricultural area. The lake is rich in aquatic resources and is one of the important freshwater fish producing areas in Africa. Lake Chad is divided into deeper southern parts and shallower northern parts. The water source of the lake mainly comes from rivers such as the Chari River that enter
Lake Chad - Misplaced Pages Continue
3456-540: Is spoken include Maiduguri , Damaturu , Hadejia , Akko , Duku , Kwami , Kano , Kaduna , Gusau , Jos and Lafia . In central Nigeria, the Kanuri are usually referred to as Bare-Bari or Beriberi. Central Kanuri, also known as Yerwa Kanuri, is the main language of the Kanuri people living in Borno State, Yobe State and Gombe State, and it is usually referred to as Kanuri in Nigeria. Manga Kanuri, which
3564-421: Is steep with a dip angle of about 55°, while the western fault has a dip angle of about 45°. The overall thickness of the inner layer in the slope area is relatively thin. In the central area of the basin, the thickness of the sedimentary strata is large, and the thickness of the sedimentary center zone reaches over 10,000 m (33,000 ft). The northern part of the basin appears steep in the west and gentle in
3672-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
3780-528: Is the main language of the Kanuri people in Yobe State, Jigawa State and Bauchi State, is usually referred to as Manga or Mangari or Mangawa , and they are distinct from the Kanuri , which is a term generally used for speakers of Central Kanuri. The Kanembu language is also spoken in Borno State on the border with Chad. In Niger, the Kanuri region is composed of Diffa Region and Zinder Region in
3888-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
3996-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
4104-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
4212-509: Is usually the hottest month of the year, with temperatures occasionally reaching 40 °C (104 °F) , the lowest water levels appear in June to July, and the highest water levels in November to December, with surface water temperatures ranging from 19 to 32 °C (66 to 90 °F) . The Chad Basin covers an area of about 1 × 10 ^ km (390,000 sq mi), and is injected by
4320-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
4428-702: The Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
Lake Chad - Misplaced Pages Continue
4536-838: The Ajami Arabic script , mainly in religious or court contexts, for at least four hundred years. More recently, it is also sometimes written in a modified Latin script . The Gospel of John published in 1965 was produced in Roman and Arabic script. A standardized romanized orthography (known as the Standard Kanuri Orthography in Nigeria) was developed by the Kanuri Research Unit and the Kanuri Language Board. Its elaboration, based on
4644-808: The Benue River through the Mayo Kébbi , and finally flows into the Atlantic Ocean through the Niger River . The vast waters formed during the African humid period provided conditions for the emergence of lakeside fishermen's settlements, and the Nilo-Saharan ethnic group also migrated to Lake Chad during this period. Agriculture also emerged in the Sahel region at this time. By 1800 BC,
4752-581: The Chari , Logone , and Yobe Rivers . The water supply of the lake is seasonal. Most of the precipitation comes from the Adamawa Plateau in the south of the basin, which is transported to the lake basin through the Chari River and the Logone River. The two contribute 95% of the total inflow of Lake Chad, while the Yobe River only contributes less than 2.5%. The lake seeps through the underground to
4860-656: The Kanem Empire in the northeast of Lake Chad. At the beginning of the founding of the country, the Kanem people continued to live a nomadic life until the 11th century, when they were Islamized and settled in Njimi . Through trans-Saharan trade , the power of the Kanem Empire reached its peak in the 13th century, but as the empire declined in the 14th century, its southwestern vassal state of Bornu began to rise, causing
4968-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
5076-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
5184-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
5292-710: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Kanuri language At
5400-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
5508-571: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
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#17327652753235616-606: The 5th century AD camels were being used for trans-Saharan trade via the Fezzan, or to the east via Darfur . After the Arabs conquered North Africa during the 7th and 8th centuries, the Chad Basin became increasingly linked to the Muslim countries. Trade and improved agricultural techniques enabled more sophisticated societies. Around 900 AD, the Kanem people who spoke the Kanuri language unified numerous nomadic tribes and established
5724-834: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
5832-563: The Congo River Basin to the Chari River Basin every year, and use a series of dams along the route to generate electricity. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of
5940-513: The Kanuri or Bornu Language which contains texts in Kanuri and in English translation. There is a selection of proverbs, stories and fables, and historical fragments. In his English translation, Koelle misidentifies the trickster ground-squirrel , kə̀nyérì , as a weasel. Richard Francis Burton in his Wit and Wisdom from West Africa included a selection of the proverbs reported by Koelle. Here are some of those proverbs: Hakkiwa-a nambe
6048-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
6156-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
6264-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
6372-453: The basin is characterized by an asymmetric fault depression composite rift with steep slopes in the east and gentle slopes in the west on the profile, and is distributed in an NNW direction on the plane. There are two large basin‐bounding normal fault developed on both sides of the basin, with a graben style fault and depression in the middle. The east and west sides are outward dipping low angle gentle slope areas. The eastern boundary fault
6480-418: The benefits of new land from the receding waters. The surrounding residents who used to rely on lake water were forced to relocate, causing the economy of the lake area to continuously shrink. Since 1970, five countries in the southern part of the basin have constructed numerous water conservancy projects in the upper reaches of the Chari River, Logone River, and Yobe River to intercept river water, resulting in
6588-461: The climate became drier. Around 20,000–40,000 years ago, eolianite sand dunes began to form in the north of the basin. The area of Lake Chad experienced four heydays between 39,000 BC and 300 BC, leaving thick diatomaceous earth and lacustrine deposits in the strata. This has been called Mega-Chad. The maximum depth of Mega-Chad exceeds 180 m (590 ft) and covers an area of approximately 400,000 km (150,000 sq mi), flowed into
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#17327652753236696-460: The committee is located in N'Djamena , Chad. The commission's tasks include managing Lake Chad and its water resources, protecting the ecosystem, and promoting regional integration, peace, security, and development in the Lake Chad region. The surrounding countries' water replenishment plan for Lake Chad includes the construction of a 2,400 km (1,500 mi) canal to transport 100 × 10 ^ m (130 × 10 ^ cu yd) of water from
6804-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
6912-652: The dialect of Maiduguri, was carried out by the Orthography Committee of the Kanuri Language Board, under the Chairmanship of Abba Sadiq, Waziri of Borno . It was officially approved by the Kanuri Language Board in Maiduguri , Nigeria, in 1975. Letters used : a b c d e ǝ f g h i j k l m n ny o p r ɍ s sh t u w y z. In 1854, Sigismund Koelle published African Native Literature, or Proverbs, Tales, Fables, and Historical Fragments in
7020-493: The drought in the 1970s, the soil that can be planted without irrigation and fertilization has been exposed at the bottom of the lake, and it has been reclaimed as a polder for planting maize, cowpea , rice , sorghum and other crops. Farmers have shifted from planting mainly dry crops, such as wheat, to rice with high water demand, resulting in more serious soil salinization and water eutrophication. The adverse effects of reduced water sources on fishing, farming, and herding outweigh
7128-471: The east on the profile. Five fault structural zones parallel to the basin‐bounding faults have developed from west to east. Lake Chad is divided into north and south parts by a shallow sill called the Great Barrier, with the bottom of the northern basin at an altitude of 275.3 m (903 ft) and the bottom of the southern basin at 278.2 m (913 ft). When the water level in the south exceeds 279 m (915 ft) above sea level, it will flow into
7236-473: The eastern archipelago is between 0 and 2 m (6 ft 7 in). The climate of the Lake Chad region is strongly influenced by continental and maritime air masses . The maritime air mass moves northward during the summer, producing seasonal precipitation. In late summer, continental air mass dominate again. The average annual precipitation in the Lake Chad area is 330 mm (13 in), with an average annual precipitation of 560 mm (22.0 in) on
7344-412: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
7452-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
7560-447: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
7668-452: The following languages, while many linguists (e.g. Cyffer 1998) regard them as dialects of a single language. The first three are spoken by ethnic Kanuri and thought by them as dialects of their language. The variety attested in 17th-century Qur'anic glosses is known as Old Kanembu . In the context of religious recitation and commentaries, a heavily archaizing descendant of this is still used, called Tarjumo . Kanuri has been written using
7776-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
7884-623: The growing interest in Africa among European academic and business communities, the Lake Chad area was extensively described by Europeans in the 19th century. Three scientific expeditions were conducted between 1898 and 1909. During the Berlin Conference in 1884–1885, Africa was divided between the European colonial powers. By the second decade of the 20th century, Lake Chad had been colonized and occupied by Britain , France , and Germany , defining boundaries that are largely intact with
7992-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
8100-602: The lake are all facing the problem of extreme poverty, and due to the difficulty in meeting their livelihoods, some local residents have been involved in drug and arms trade. This has been exacerbated by the activity of Boko Haram , an insurgency that has displaced millions of people and disrupted development through the region. Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Chad established the Lake Chad Basin Commission on 22 May 1964. The Central African Republic joined in 1996, and Libya joined in 2008. The headquarters of
8208-479: The lake. The water level varies greatly seasonally, and the area of the lake also changes dramatically. During the African humid period , the area of Lake Chad reached 400,000 km (150,000 sq mi). Due to the increasingly arid climate, the lake surface gradually shrank. In the 19th century, Lake Chad still had an area of 28,000 km (11,000 sq mi). However, due to climate change and human water diversion, Lake Chad has been greatly reduced since
8316-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
8424-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
8532-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
8640-638: The lowest point of the Chad Basin, the Bodélé Depression , approximately 480 km (300 mi) northeast of Lake Chad, with the deepest point reaching an elevation of only 155 m (509 ft) above sea level. This takes away most of the salinity and maintains the low salinity of Lake Chad. The southwestern waters of Lake Chad being freshwater, and the water in the northeast is only slightly salty. The water volume of most large lakes in Africa depends on rainfall and evaporation, which means that temperature and precipitation are crucial for regulating
8748-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
8856-532: The mid-1970s, and its area has fluctuated between 2,000 and 5,000 km (770 and 1,930 sq mi). The Chad Basin was formed by the depression of the African Shield . The floor of the basin is made of Precambrian bedrock covered by more than 3,600 m (11,800 ft) of sedimentary deposits. For most of the Quaternary , the basin had abundant water sources. Towards the end of this period
8964-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
9072-460: The north. In the south, there is continuous open water at the mouth of the Chari River, and the western part of the water is covered by reed swamps, and the sand dunes that are not completely submerged in the eastern waters form an archipelago. The average depth of the southern lake basin is between .5 and 2 m (1 ft 8 in and 6 ft 7 in), that of the northern lake basin is between 0 and 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in), and that of
9180-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
9288-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
9396-456: The people of the lake area, which almost ceased during drought periods and only resumed in the mid-1990s. Most fishing products are dried, pickled, or smoked. The natron produced in the depression on the northeast bank of the lake has long been of significant economic significance. Traditionally, it has been excavated in blocks and transported across the lake to enter the Nigerian market. Since
9504-540: The power center of the empire to shift to Bornu around 1400. In the second half of the 16th century, the Bornu Empire began importing firearms from North Africa, consolidating its military hegemony. The Bornu Empire declined in the 18th century, and later lost its western region to the Sokoto Caliphate during the early 19th century. It was later colonised by European powers in the 20th century. Following
9612-406: The present post-colonial states . At the beginning of independence, the countries surrounding Lake Chad not only had a poor economic foundation, but also had more complex ethnic, religious, and political conflicts. Nigeria and Niger , which had just gained independence, experienced continuous coups, while Chad also experienced ongoing civil war. The inability of countries along the lake to consider
9720-479: The protection of Lake Chad has led to a series of environmental problems. The Chad Basin includes Chad , Nigeria, Cameroon , Niger, Sudan , and the Central African Republic . It is an extensional fault depression type rift basin , which can be divided into four secondary structural units : southern depression, northern depression, central uplift, and eastern slope. The southern depression of
9828-466: The range of 2,000 to 5,000 km (770 to 1,930 sq mi) thereafter. From June 1966 to January 1973, the area of Lake Chad shrank from 22,772 to 15,400 km (8,792 to 5,946 sq mi), further shrunk to 4,398 km (1,698 sq mi) in 1975, and only 1,756 km (678 sq mi) in February 1994. Since then, the area of Lake Chad has entered a relatively stable stage with
9936-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
10044-520: The rivers that feed the lake are the main reasons for the shrinkage of Lake Chad. The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation have affected precipitation in the Sahel region. From the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, the lake water level decreased by 3 m (9.8 ft) compared to the average level from 1900 to 2010. In 1870, the area of Lake Chad was about 28,000 km (11,000 sq mi). The lake
10152-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
10260-486: The shores of lakes with long floods in the south. The area of permanent vegetation has increased from about 3,800 km (1,500 sq mi) in 2000 to about 5,200 km (2,000 sq mi) in 2020 as water levels have dropped and temperatures have increased. The surrounding dense woodland has been converted to open forest with acacias , baobabs , palms and Indian jujube . The lake has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International . It
10368-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
10476-518: The south bank and about 250 mm (9.8 in) on the north bank. The highest temperature in the rainy season is 30 °C (86 °F), and the highest temperature rises to more than 32 °C (90 °F) when October and November enter the dry season. The temperature difference between day and night is almost twice that of the rainy season, and the lowest nighttime temperature sometimes drops to 8 °C (46 °F) in December and January. April
10584-446: The southeast. Parts of Agadez Region are also Kanuri. Cities where it is spoken include Zinder , Diffa , N'Guigmi and Bilma . In Zinder region, the main dialect is Manga. In Diffa Region, the main dialect is Tumari or Kanembu; Kanembu is spoken by a minority. In Agadez Region, the main dialect is Bilma. Central Kanuri is a minority dialect, and is commonly referred to as Bare-Bari or Beriberi. Ethnologue divides Kanuri into
10692-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
10800-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
10908-680: The turn of the 21st century, its two main dialects, Manga Kanuri and Yerwa Kanuri (also called Beriberi, which its speakers consider to be pejorative), were spoken by 9,700,000 people in Central Africa . It belongs to the Western Saharan subphylum of Nilo-Saharan . Kanuri is the language associated with the Kanem and Bornu empires that dominated the Lake Chad region for a thousand years. The basic word order of Kanuri sentences
11016-440: The upper reaches of the rivers entering the lake changed the time and scope of seasonal floods and disrupted the migration of fish, resulting in a sharp reduction in the populations of Alestes baremoze and Nile perch , the main catches of Lake Chad, and a significant reduction in the catch. At the same time, the conflicts between countries and ethnic groups competing for water and land are also escalating. The four countries along
11124-513: The water balance of these bodies of water, and any fluctuations can cause significant changes in their water level and area. Lake Chad is a shallow inland lake, and the rainfall in the Chad basin is very sensitive to small changes in atmospheric circulation, so the surface area of Lake Chad is greatly affected by climate change. Dry climate due to vegetation loss from overgrazing and deforestation and large-scale irrigation projects that diverted water from
11232-408: The water source of Chad Lake for irrigation, breeding, animal husbandry and drinking. Local self-sufficient crops include sorghum , maize , finger millet , beans , and vegetables . Gourd is widely planted for making utensils. The collection of forest products such as gum arabic , honey , beeswax , and firewood is of great significance in the region. However, the reduction in forest area has had
11340-831: The wetlands. At present, most of the large mammals have been hunted to extinction, replaced by a large number of cattle. The entire Chad Basin has 179 species of fish, of which 127 are the same as the Niger River Basin, 85 are the same as the Nile River Basin, 47 are the same as the Congo River Basin , and 84 fish species are distributed in the lake. This makes it a rich fishing ground for communities across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. The seasonal influx of floods combined with seasonal increases in air temperature leads to decreased salinity, increased turbidity, and increased trophic levels, which catalyzed
11448-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
11556-672: Was able to flow out of the Bahr el-Ghazal during the rainy season. At the turn of the 20th century the area of Lake Chad shrank briefly, and reached a new high in the middle of the 20th century and overflowed from the Bahr el-Ghazal again. A major drought started in the Sahel region in the late 1960s and caused severe damage in 1972 and 1984. It was thought to be related to vegetation loss, global warming, and sea surface temperature anomalies. During this period, Lake Chad shrunk considerably and fluctuated in
11664-588: Was found in the Chad Basin, charred together with wild grasses, and their era can be traced back to 800–1000 cal BC. Permanent villages were established to the south of the lake by 500 BC, and major archaeological discoveries include the Sao civilization . According to the records of Claudius Ptolemy in the mid-2nd century AD, the Romans of the 1st century AD had already come into contact with Lake Chad through their connections with Tunisia, Tripolitania , and Fezzan . By
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