What Are Nilo-Saharan Languages?
If someone asks you a question that you don’t know the answer to, you will pick up your phone to ask the internet. There was a time when the internet was the last resort for people. When they couldn’t find the answers anywhere, they would turn to the internet. But now that all the information has been moved to the online world and Wikipedia can tell you all about the world, the internet is the first-place people turn to look for something. Whether it is a complex question about a forgotten culture or a simple fact check about something common, the internet can help you with everything.
It is a great tool in our hands. Not only does it increase our knowledge about the world around us, it also helps us connect with people who want to learn about similar things and have the same interests as us. Online libraries are quickly gaining popularity. Even if people don’t want to give up physical books, the comfort of using e-books is hard to ignore. They are the cheaper alternative and are also readily available. You don’t have to order one and wait for a couple of days for it to arrive.
The way in which the digital world has been helping us accumulate knowledge has more benefits than one can count. However, the internet with all the information it offers us has made us forget that we don’t know everything. It is true that we have discovered a lot of species, studied various cultures, and discovered thousands of languages, but there is still plenty of things in the world that we have no idea about. A huge portion of the ocean is undiscovered, and maybe it always will remain the same. There are cultures that we haven’t studied but are practiced by people living in remote areas of the world. There are languages that we don’t know about. It can be hard to accept fact for humans who have gotten used to getting all the information they need from the internet, but there is a lot around us that we have no idea about.
It is true that we have been around for a long time but that doesn’t mean that our learning process should have ended by now. Learning is something that doesn’t have to end ever. Which means humans can continue to learn more and more about the world around them and everything that happens in it. We still have a lot of time to explore all the parts of earth that we didn’t get to study in the past. We can meet tribes living in remote areas and learn about their customs and traditions. We can also put in our efforts to study languages that we never paid much attention it simply because they weren’t being spoken in the first world countries.
Some people might like to think that there is no favoritism on earth and poor and underdeveloped countries get the same coverage as the first world states, but they would be wrong. We are slow to study cultures and languages of people living in poor regions. However, there is something that happens in every field when it comes to the underdeveloped countries and that is arguments. Everyone wants to prove to others that they know better about a culture they are not even a part of, without ever asking the natives what opinion they hold about something which is clearly related to them and affects their daily life.
What Are Nilo-Saharan Languages?
Niger-Congo and Afroasiatic are the most famous language families in Africa. Most of the languages spoken in the region belong to either of the families. However, that doesn’t mean that all African languages have been discovered and categorized by linguists. There are still plenty of them that we have no idea about. However, the frustrating part is that no attempt has been made to study these languages. If we tried to learn more about them, we will be able to categorize them in a better way.
Nilo-Saharan is a disputed family of languages. The languages in the family are spoken in seventeen African nations. As is obvious from the name of the family, it covers the Nile basin and the central Sahara Desert. There are plenty of sub divisions of the group but none of them are considered valid by linguists. The major languages of the family include Luo, Kanuri, Songhay, Teso, Nubian, Acholi, and Dinka. Most of the Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by a million or less speakers. This is probably a reason why the family doesn’t get enough attention and continues to have a disputed identity.
Many experts argue that languages which didn’t belong in any other group were thrown together to make up this family. However, the others say that the tongues share a lot of similarities and the more they are studied, the more prominent their connection becomes. As of now, the family has a disputed status. But if research gets started about it and a conclusion is reached upon, then that status can change. Until then, we can continue to learn about the Nilo-Saharan languages without worrying about the status of the family. As long as there are speakers of the languages, the family remains important. All the tongues spoken in the African interior will eventually be a part of a family where they belong, whether that turns out to be Nilo-Saharan is a question that only research can answer.
