Songhay
Language · official in 1 country
Ayneha is what speakers call these languages as a whole; Songhay was first the name of the ruling caste of the Songhai Empire. The Songhay languages stretch along the middle Niger through Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria, and in Mali the dialect of Gao is the one adopted for primary schools.
The language on record
- Own name
- Ayneha
- Script
- Not recorded
- Family
- Songhay
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Songhay is official
Mali is the only country on record for Songhay, though Zarma, a Songhay language, is a major language of southwestern Niger.
Official beside Songhay
About Songhay
Who first used the name Songhay
Songhay named the ruling caste of the Songhai Empire, not a people or a language. Some speakers in Mali have since taken it as their ethnic name, while others call themselves Zarma or Isawaghen. The languages have been a lingua franca on the Niger since the empire, heard in Timbuktu, Djenné, Gao and Niamey. A few precolonial poems and letters in Songhay, written in Arabic script, survive in Timbuktu; the languages are now written in Latin letters.
Why their family is still disputed
Joseph Greenberg placed Songhay in Nilo-Saharan in 1963 on about 70 claimed cognates, and Roger Blench sees it as closest to the Saharan languages. Lacroix accepted only about 30 of those cognates. Others have pointed to Mande: Creissels made some 50 comparisons, and Nicolaï proposed in 1990 that Songhay is a Berber-based creole restructured under Mande influence. Gerrit Dimmendaal considers it best treated as an independent family.
How far apart the varieties are
Southern Songhay follows the Niger. Koyraboro Senni of Gao is unintelligible to speakers of Zarma, while Zarma, Dendi and Songhoyboro Ciine understand each other well. Northern Songhay, a group of dialects in the Sahara, is so heavily Berber that it is sometimes called mixed. Most varieties are tonal with verb-final order; Koyra Chiini of Timbuktu has no tones and puts the verb before the object.
Common questions
Questions about Songhay
Which Songhay dialect is used in Mali's schools?
The dialect of Gao, east of Timbuktu, which the government adopted as the medium of primary education.
Is Songhay a Nilo-Saharan language?
It is usually filed as one, following Greenberg in 1963, but the classification is controversial. Some linguists treat Songhay as an independent family, and Nicolaï once argued it began as a Berber-based creole.
What does the morpheme -ndi do in Songhay?
It marks either the causative or an agentless passive, and a verb can take it twice, once in each sense.