Nilo-Saharan

American  

[nahy-loh-suh-har-uhn, -hair-, -hahr-] / ˌnaɪ loʊ səˈhær ən, -ˈhɛər-, -ˈhɑr- /

noun

1. a family of African languages, including the Central and Eastern Sudanic groups as well as Kanuri, Songhai, and other languages, spoken from the Sahara southward to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania.

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Nilo-Saharan British  

/ ˌnaɪləʊsəˈhɑːrən /

noun

1. a family of languages of Africa, spoken chiefly by Nilotic peoples in a region extending from the Sahara to Kenya and Tanzania, including the Chari-Nile, Saharan, Songhai, and other branches. Classification is complicated by the fact that many languages spoken in this region belong to the unrelated Afro-Asiatic, Kordofanian, and Niger-Congo families

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adjective

1. relating to or belonging to this family of languages

Example Sentences

The dynamic in the region changed sometime in the ninth century, with the arrival of a nomadic horse-riding people who spoke Songhai, a dialect of the Nilo-Saharan language family.

From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023

In Nilo-Saharan Maasai, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania, it's "papa," and, in the Semitic language Hebrew, "abba."

From Salon • Jun. 18, 2022

Thus, the evidence derived from plant names in modern African languages permits us to glimpse the existence of three languages being spoken in Africa thousands of years ago: ancestral Nilo-Saharan, ancestral Niger-Congo, and ancestral Afroasiatic.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

Here they encountered a melting pot of Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan farmers and herders growing millet and sorghum and raising livestock in drier areas, along with Khoisan hunter-gatherers.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

The fragmented distribution of Nilo-Saharan languages in Figure 19.2 similarly implies that many speakers of those languages have been engulfed by speakers of Afroasiatic or Niger-Congo languages.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond