Eastern Sudanic Languages - Internal Classification

Internal Classification

There are two recent classifications of East Sudanic languages. The one followed by other historical linguists is Bender 2000.

Bender 2000

Bender assigns the languages into two branches, depending on whether the 1sg pronoun ("I") has a /k/ or an /n/:

Eastern
Sudanic
Northern
(k languages)

Nubian



Nara



Nyima



Taman



Southern
(n languages)

Surmic



Eastern Jebel



Temein (Nuba Hills)



Daju



Nilotic




Ehret 2001

Ehret, published in 2001 but circulating in manuscript form since at least 1984, calls the family "Eastern Sahelian", and idiosyncratically adds the Kuliak languages and Berta, which Bender assigns to higher-level branches of Nilo-Saharan, and reassigns Nyima to the southern branch. No evidence has been published for any of these assignments, and they have not been picked up by other linguists. For example, (Blench 2007) calls the reassignment of Nyima to the Temein family "a classification which suggests the author has not seriously considered all the relevant data (none of which is referenced in the bibliography)".

Eastern
Sahelian
Astaboran

Nara (Barea)


Western
Astaboran

Nubian



Taman





Kuliak ("Rub")


Kir–Abbaian
Jebel

Eastern Jebel (Tabi)



Berta



Kir

Temein (including Nyima)



Daju


Surma–
Nilotic

Surmic



Nilotic






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