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Kanuri language

NameKanuri
FamilycolorNilo-Saharan
StatesNiger, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon
RegionWest Africa
Speakers4 million (1987 figures)
EthnicityKanuri (Yerwa Kanuri etc.), Kanembu
Fam2Saharan
Fam3Western Saharan
Iso1kr|iso2=kau
Iso3kau
Lc1knc|ld1=Central Kanuri
Lc2kby|ld2=Manga Kanuri
Lc3krt|ld3=Tumari Kanuri
Lc4bms|ld4=Bilma Kanuri
Lc5kbl|ld5=Kanembu|ll6=Kanembu language
MapcaptionMap of the majority usage of the five major languages of the Kanuri language group. *BMS Kanuri, Bilma *KNC Kanuri, Central *KBY Kanuri, Manga *KRT Kanuri, Tumari *KBL Kanembu

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Kanuri is a dialect continuum spoken by some four million people, as of 1987, in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, as well as small minorities in southern Libya and by a diaspora in Sudan. It belongs to the Western Saharan subphylum of Nilo-Saharan. Kanuri is the language associated with the Kanem and Bornu empires which dominated the Lake Chad region for a thousand years.

The basic word order of Kanuri sentences is subject � object � verb. It is typologically unusual in simultaneously having postpositions and post-nominal modifiers � for example, "Bintu's pot" would be expressed as nje Bintu-be, "pot Bintu-of".

Kanuri has three tones: high, low, and falling. It has an extensive system of consonant weakening (for example, sa- "they" + -buna "have eaten" > za-wuna "they have eaten".

Traditionally a local lingua franca, its usage has declined in recent decades. Most first-language speakers speak Hausa or Arabic as a second language.


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