Bʼaga languages
Language family of the Ethiopia–Sudan border region
title: "Bʼaga languages" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["bʼaga-languages", "komuz-languages", "language-families"] description: "Language family of the Ethiopia–Sudan border region" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bʼaga_languages" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Language family of the Ethiopia–Sudan border region ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox language family"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Bʼaga |
| altname | Gumuz |
| region | border of Ethiopia and Sudan |
| ethnicity | Gumuz |
| familycolor | Nilo-Saharan |
| fam2 | Komuz? |
| child1 | Northern Gumuz |
| child2 | Yaso? |
| child3 | Southern Gumuz |
| child4 | Daatsʼiin |
| child5 | Kadallu |
| glotto | gumu1250 |
| glottorefname | Gumuz |
| :: |
|name=Bʼaga |altname=Gumuz |region=border of Ethiopia and Sudan |ethnicity=Gumuz |familycolor=Nilo-Saharan |fam2=Komuz? |child1=Northern Gumuz |child2=Yaso? |child3=Southern Gumuz |child4=Daatsʼiin |child5=Kadallu |glotto=gumu1250 |glottorefname=Gumuz
The Bʼaga languages, also known as Gumuz, form a small language family spoken along the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. They have been tentatively classified as closest to the Koman languages within the Nilo-Saharan language family.
Languages
There are four to five Bʼaga languages. Grammatical forms are distinct between Northern Gumuz and Southern Gumuz. Yaso is at least a divergent dialect, perhaps distinct enough to count as a separate language. Daatsʼiin, discovered in 2013, is closest to Southern Gumuz, while Kadallu in Sudan is attested by only two short word lists.
A comparative word list of Daatsʼiin, Northern Gumuz, and Southern Gumuz is available in Ahland & Kelly (2014). The internal classification appears to be as follows:
- Bʼaga (Gumuzic)
- Dasʼin
- Gumuz
- Guba
- Wenbera
- Agelo Meti
- Sira Abay
- Eastern Gumuz
- Yaso
- North Gumuz
- Metemma
- Mandura
- North Dibatʼe
Classification
Dimmendaal (2008) notes that mounting grammatical evidence has made the Nilo-Saharan proposal as a whole more sound since Greenberg proposed it in 1963, but that such evidence has not been forthcoming for Songhay, Koman, and Bʼaga/Gumuz: "very few of the more widespread nominal and verbal morphological markers of Nilo-Saharan are attested in the Coman languages plus Gumuz ... Their genetic status remains debatable, mainly due to lack of more extensive data." (2008:843) And later, "In summarizing the current state of knowledge, ... the following language families or phyla can be identified — ... Mande, Songhai, Ubangian, Kadu, and the Coman languages plus Gumuz." (2008:844)
This "Coman plus Gumuz" is what Greenberg (1963) had subsumed under Koman and what Bender (1989) had called Komuz, a broader family consisting of Gumuz and the Koman languages. However, Bender (2000) separated Gumuz as at least a distinct branch of Nilo-Saharan, and suggested that it might even be a language isolate. Dimmendaal (2000), who tentatively included Koman within Nilo-Saharan, excluded Gumuz as an isolate, as it did not share the tripartite singulative–collective–plurative number system characteristic of the rest of the Nilo-Saharan language families. Ahland (2010, 2012), however, reports that with better attestation, Gumuz does indeed appear to be Nilo-Saharan, and perhaps closest to Koman. It has grammatical forms that resemble what might be expected from an ancestral proto-Nilo-Saharan language. Gumuz may thus help elucidate the family, which is extremely diverse and has been difficult to substantiate.
Dimmendaal, Ahland & Jakobi (2019) summarize earlier work that the evidence "suggests that Gumuz and Koman may indeed form two subgroups within a broader 'Komuz' family" and that "there is some evidence that these two language families may indeed be part of a broader Nilo-Saharan phylum, albeit outliers in the family".
Notes
References
- Ahland, Colleen Anne. "The Classification of Gumuz and Koman Languages",https://web.archive.org/web/20120316221945/http://25images.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/player/player.php?id=72&id_sequence=433&quality=hd presented at the Language Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyons, December 4, 2010
- Lionel Bender, 2000. "Nilo-Saharan". In Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse (eds.), African Languages: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
- Dimmendaal, Gerrit J., 2000. "Number marking and noun categorization in Nilo- Saharan languages". Anthrolopological Linguistics 42:214–261.
- Gerrit Dimmendaal, 2008. "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent", Language and Linguistics Compass 2/5:842.
References
- The letter {{angbr. Bʼ is an implosive {{IPAblink. ɓ. The name comes from ''ɓaga'', the word for 'people' in the Gumuz languages and Daatsʼiin
- 'Gumuz' is increasingly restricted to the Gumuz languages proper: Northern Gumuz, Yaso Gumuz and Southern Gumuz.
- Gerrit Dimmendaal, Colleen Ahland & Angelika Jakobi (2019) Linguistic features and typologies in languages commonly referred to as 'Nilo-Saharan', ''Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics'', p. 6–7
- Güldemann, Tom. (2018). "The Languages and Linguistics of Africa". De Gruyter Mouton.
- Ahland, Colleen Anne. 2004. "Linguistic variation within Gumuz: a study of the relationship between historical change and intelligibility." M.A. thesis. University of Texas at Arlington.
- Ahland, Colleen and Eliza Kelly. 2014. [https://www.academia.edu/16371000/Daats%CA%BCi_in-Gumuz_Comparative_Word_list Daatsʼíin-Gumuz Comparative Word list].
- (January 2023). "In defence of Nilo --Saharan Saharan". Nisa.
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