Zaghawa/Beri
Zaghawa (exonym) or Beria (endonym) is a Saharan language of the Nilo-Saharan phylum spoken by a tribe of pastoralists and farmers in Darfur and parts of Chad. Although the ethnic group has climbed to the upper echelon of power in Chad (the president, Idriss Déby is a Zaghawa), their homeland in Darfur has been targeted for destruction by the government of Omar al-Bashir and they are now largely living in refugee camps in the Sudan-Chad borderlands. The two largest dialects of Zaghawa, those of Kube and Wegi, both have representative speakers in the refugee community here in New York City.
Compared to many other languages of Sudan, Zaghawa is relatively well described. Jakobi & Crass’s (2004) recent grammar covers the phonology and morphology in detail and Wolfe (2001) provides a comparative phonology of several dialects. Nonetheless, only one dialect (that of Kube) is well described and many basic questions still remain regarding Zaghawa syntax. More importantly, there is no available audio or video documentation of this fascinating language and very few texts have been published. In the current project, we aim to further our understanding of Zaghawa grammar and provide glossed texts with accompanying annotated audio and video.
Below is a short narration about Tawila, what used to be a prosperous town in Darfur before it was destroyed in the current conflict. The speaker is Nasseruddin, who grew up in a migrant Zaghawa community in Khashm al-Girba, in Eastern Sudan and now lives in New York City.
Sources
Jakobi, Angelika and Joachim Crass. 2004. Grammaire du beria. Nilo-Saharan Linguistic Analyses and Documentation Vol. 18, M. Lionel Bender, Franz Rottland and Norbert Cyffer (eds.). Köln: Rüdiger Küppe Verlag.
Wolfe, Andrew Miller. 2001. Towards a generative phonology and morphology of the dialects of Beria. B.A. honors thesis, Department of Linguistics, Harvard University.
