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The Songhay or Songhai languages (pronounced , or are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. In particular, they are spoken in the cities of Timbuktu and Gao. They have been widely used as a ''lingua franca'' in that region ever since the era of the Songhai Empire. In Mali, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao (east of Timbuktu) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education.〔Heath 2005〕 As regards interintelligibility of Songhay languages, the dialect of Koyraboro Senni spoken in Gao is unintelligible to speakers of the Zarma dialect of Niger, according to the Ethnologue.〔(Ethnologue report for Niger )〕 For linguists, a major point of interest in the Songhay languages has been the difficulty of determining their genetic affiliation; they are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan, as defined by Greenberg in 1963, but this classification remains controversial. Dimmendaal (2008) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family.〔Dimmendaal 2008: __〕 The name ''Songhay'' is historically neither an ethnic nor a linguistic designation, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhai Empire. Under the influence of French language usage, speakers in Mali have increasingly been adopting it as an ethnic self-designation;〔Heath 1999:2〕 however, other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves with other ethnic terms, such as Zarma (Djerma) or Isawaghen. A few precolonial poems and letters composed in Songhay and written in the Arabic alphabet are extant in Timbuktu.〔Hunwick and Boye 2008: ____〕 However, Songhay is currently written in the Latin script. ==Varieties== Researchers classify the Songhay languages into two main branches, Southern and Northern.〔A map of the varieties is provided by Ethnologue at its Web site. See the list of External Links.〕 Southern Songhay is centered on the Niger River. Zarma (Djerma), the most widely spoken Songhay language with two or three million speakers, is a major language of southwestern Niger (downriver from and south of Mali) including in the capital city, Niamey. Koyraboro Senni, with 400,000 speakers, is the language of the town of Gao, the seat of the old Songhai Empire. Koyra Chiini is spoken to its west. The much smaller Northern Songhay is a group of heavily Berber-influenced dialects spoken in the Sahara. Since the Berber influence extends beyond the lexicon into the inflectional morphology, the Northern Songhay languages are sometimes viewed as mixed languages.〔(SIL Working Papers on Songhay )〕 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「Songhay languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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