Les monts Nouba : une région riche de ses langues

Abstract

Since Quint (2006), no general account of the languages spoken in the Nuba Mountains has ever been published in French. This paper aims at filling that gap. In section 1, we introduce the various languages spoken today in the Nuba Mountains, emphasizing the importance of native tongues but also mentioning the other languages in use in that region, in particular several local varieties of Arabic. In section two, we show that, in spite of their many typological and phylogenetic differences, most of Nuba Mountain languages do share a significant amount of commonalities, allowing to conceive of the region as an area of linguistic convergence. We conclude on the challenges and prospects that future research on the Nuba Mountain languages is expected to meet on the brink of the second quarter of the 21st century.