The Songhay languages are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the Niger river, widely used as a lingua franca, particularly thanks to the medieval Songhay Empire.

They fall into two main groups:

• Southern Songhai is spoken mainly along and south of the Niger river; it includes Zarma (Djerma), a major language of Niger with 2 million speakers, Dendi in Benin, and in Mali Koyraboro Senni with 400,000 speakers, Humburi Senni, and Koyra Chiini. Dendi is heavily influenced by Bariba.
• The much smaller Northern Songhai is a group of heavily Berber-influenced dialects spoken in the Sahara, including Tadaksahak in northern Mali, Tasawaq and Tagdal in northern Niger, the extinct Emghedeshie of Agadez, and Korandje on the Algeria-Morocco border at Tabelbala. While varieties of Tamasheq are the main influence on the others, Korandje appears to be influenced more by Northern Berber.

Many medieval manuscripts in Songhay exist, written in the Arabic alphabet, especially in Timbuktu; however, in modern times it is written in the Latin alphabet.

Classification

Songhay is normally considered to be Nilo-Saharan, following Joseph Greenberg's 1963 reclassification of African languages; Greenberg's argument is based on about 70 claimed cognates, including pronouns. This point has been developed further by, in particular, Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret; Bender sees it as an independent subfamily of Nilo-Saharan, while Ehret (based on 565 claimed cognates) regards it as a member of the Western Sahelian branch, together with the Maban languages of western Sudan and eastern Chad.

However, this point is not uncontroversial. Greenberg's argument was subjected to serious criticism by Lacroix (1969, pp. 91-92), who claimed to have found only about 30 of Greenberg's claimed cognates to be acceptable, and argued that these were mainly between Zarma and the neighboring Saharan languages, thus leading one to suspect them of being loanwords. Certain Songhay-Mande similarities have long been observed (at least since Westermann), and both Creissels (1981) and Nicolaï (1977, 1984) investigated the possibility of a Mande relationship; the former found some 50 comparisons, including many body parts, while the latter found some 450 similar words as well as some conspicuous typological traits. However, Nicolaï eventually concluded that this approach was not adequate, and in 1990 proposed a distinctly novel hypothesis: that Songhay is a Berber-based creole restructured under Mande influence. In support of this he proposed 412 possible similarities, ranging all the way from basic vocabulary (tasa "liver") to obvious borrowings (anzad "violin", alkaadi "qadi".) Others, such as Gerrit Dimmendaal, were not convinced, and Nicolaï (2003) appears to consider the question of Songhay's origins still open, while arguing cogently against Ehret and Bender's proposed etymologies.

External link

• Songhai/Zarma Language Page (http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Songhai_root.html)
• Relative Clauses in Tadaksahak (http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2003-003)
• Some verb morphology features in Tadaksahak (http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2002-005)

Bibliography

• M. C. Charles & J. M. Ducroz, 1976. Lexique songay-français, parler kaado du Gorouol. Paris.
• A. Dupuis-Yacouba, 1917. Essai pratique de méthose pour l'étude de la langue songoï. Paris.
• Jeffrey Heath, 1999. Grammar of Koyraboro (Koroboro) Senni, the Songhay of Gao. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
• Jeffrey Heath, 1998. A Grammar of Koyra Chiini, the Songhay of Timbuktu Mouton de Gruyter: Mouton Grammar Series, pp. xv, 453.
• Robert Nicolaï, 1981. Les dialectes du songhay. Paris.
• Robert Nicolaï & Petr Zima, 1997. Songhay. Munich - Newcastle : Lincom Europa.
• A. Prost, 1956. La langue soney et ses dialectes, Dakar.

On classification

• Lionel Bender, 1997. The Nilo-Saharan Languages: A Comparative Essay. München.
• D. Creissels, "De la possibilité de rapprochements entre le songhay et les langues Niger-Congo (en particulier Mandé)." In: Nilo-Saharan, Th. Schadeberg, M. L. Bender eds., pp. 185-199.
• Christopher Ehret, 2001. A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. Köln.
• Joseph Greenberg, 1963. The Languages of Africa (International Journal of American Linguistics 29.1). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• P. F. Lacroix, 1969. "L'ensemble songhay-jerma: problèmes et thèmes de travail". Actes du 8e Congrès SLAO, Abidjan. pp. 87-99.
• Robert Nicolaï, 1977. "Sur l'appartenance du songhay". Annales de la faculté des lettres de Nice, 28, pp. 129-145.
• Robert Nicolaï, 1984. Préliminaires su l'origine du songhay (matériaux, problématique et hypothèses), Berlin.
• Robert Nicolaï, Parentés linguistiques (à propos du songhay), Paris: CNRS 1990. ISBN 0991-5877.
• Robert Nicolaï, La force des choses ou l'épreuve 'nilo-saharienne': questions sur les reconstructions archéologique et l'évolution des langues, SUGIA 13, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag 2003, ISBN 3-89645-099-9