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The Senegambian languages are a branch of Niger–Congo languages centered on Senegal (and Senegambia), with most languages spoken there and in neighboring southern Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. The transhumant Fula, howewever, have spread with their languages from Senegal across the western and central Sahel. The most populous unitary language is Wolof, the national language of Senegal, with four million native speakers and millions more second-language users. There are perhaps 13 million speakers of the various varieties of Fula, and over a million speakers of Serer. A special feature of the Senegambian languages not found outside the group is its non-tonality. ==Classification== Sapir (1971) proposed a West Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo languages that included a Northern branch largely synonymous with Senegambian. However, Sapir's West Atlantic and its branches turned out to be geographic and typological rather than genealogical groups. The only investigation since then, Segerer (2010), removed the Bak languages from Sapir's Northern West Atlantic but found that the remaining languages, Senegambian (Serer–Fulani–Wolof), to be a valid group, characterized by consonant mutation: }} |2=Cangin languages }} |label2= Wolof–Nyun |2= }} |2=Nalu (Baga Mboteni, Mbulungish, Nalu) }} }} The Fula–Tenda languages all have implosive consonants, while Serer and Fula share noun-class suffixes. Several classifications, including the one used by ''Ethnologue'' 18, show Fula as being more closely related to Wolof than it is to Serer. However, this is an inherited misreading of Sapir's data by Wilson (1989).〔Segerer (2010)〕 ''Glottolog'' removes and breaks up the Nalu branch, and includes Sua with Mboteni and Mbulungish.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Senegambian languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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