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Korandje is by far the most northerly of the Songhay languages. It is spoken around the oasis of Tabelbala by no more than a few thousand people; its name, Kora-n-dje, means "village's language". While retaining a basically Songhay structure, it is extremely heavily influenced by Berber and Arabic; Lacroix estimates that only 40% of its vocabulary is Songhay, with another 30% each from Arabic and Berber.
Sounds
Little study of Korandje has been done, so the phonology of the language is necessarily somewhat tentative. According to Robert Nicolai, it has the following consonants (those in brackets are found mainly in borrowings):
Tilmatine also reports a pharyngealized r and affricate dž.
Korandje appears to have a six-vowel system: a, i, u, e, o, and ə (schwa). It is unclear whether vowel length is phonemic or not.
Grammar
The pronouns are: aγi, I; ni, you; ana, he/she/it; yayu, we; n'd'yu, y'all; ini, they. Possessive pronouns are an, my; nen, your; an, his/her/its; yan, our; n'd'en, your (pl.); in, their.
The infinitive and singular imperative are both the stem (eg xani "sleep"); the plural imperative takes a prefix u- (uxani "sleep! (pl.)). Cancel describes the conjugations as follows (also for xani): | English | Preterite | English | Aorist | | I slept | a xani | I sleep | a (ba) am xani | | you slept | n(e) xani | you sleep | n ba am xani | | he/she/it slept | a xani | he/she/it sleeps | a âm xani | | we slept | ia xani | we sleep | ia âm xani | | you (pl.) slept | nd'(a) xani | you (pl.) sleep | nd'ba âm xani | | they slept | ia xan | they sleep | iba am xani |
Verbs are negated by surrounding them with `as ... hé/hi, eg ni `as ba enγa hé > n`esbanγa hé "do not eat!". "No" is hoho or ho: n'd'xani bînu, willa ho? "did you sleep yesterday, or not?".
The plural is formed by adding -yu, eg bîri "horse" > bîriyu "horses". Some Berber loans take their original plurals in i-...-en, eg thaserdent "mule" > thiserdanen "mule"; this type is even extended to Arabic loanwords, eg dra` "arm" > dra`n "arms". Some take both plurals: adra "mountain" > adrayu or idranen "mountains".
The possessive is expressed by the particle n, with the possessor preceding the possessed: wi n âtaffa "woman 's knife".
The numbers include fu "one", inka "two".
External links - See Information on Korandje (http://www.berberemultimedia.com/PDF/EDB_14.pdf). (in PDF format; go to p. 163), or Cancel, «Etude sur le dialecte de Tabelbala », in Revue Africaine, 1908, Nº 270-271, 302-347.
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