ABSTRACT
Language family in Africa, considered by Greenberg (1963) to be a branch of the NiloSaharan languages. The following subgroupings can be made: the East Sudan languages (with nine branches, including Nubian and Nilotic), the Central Sudan languages, and a number of individual languages. The most widely spoken languages include Dinka (approx. 2.7 million speakers) and Nubian (approx. 2 million speakers) in Sudan, Luo (approx. 2.2 million speakers) and Kalenjin (approx. 2 million speakers) in Kenya, Turkana (approx 1.5 million speakers) in Uganda and Kenya. Historically there have been a number of debates regarding these languages, since researchers such as Müller (1877) and Meinhof (1912) considered some languages to be ‘Hamitic,’ based on cultural and anthropological considerations ( Afro-Asiatic). Important contributions were made by Lepsius (1880), Westermann (1935), Köhler (1955) and Tucker and Bryan (1956).
