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Azer dialect

Mande language formerly spoken in West Africa

Summary

Mande language formerly spoken in West Africa

Field	Value
name	Azer
states	Mali, Senegal, Mauritania
region	West Africa
ethnicity	Soninke
familycolor	Niger-Congo
fam1	Niger–Congo?
fam2	Mande
fam3	Western
fam4	Northwestern
fam5	Soninke–Bobo
fam6	Soninke–Bozo
fam7	Soninke
iso3exception	dialect
glotto	azer1256

Azer or Azayr is a mostly or entirely extinct dialect of the Soninke language, heavily mixed with Berber and Hassaniya Arabic, formerly spoken in Mauritania and northern Mali.

History and distribution

Azer arose as a lingua franca for trade across the Sahel, a mixture between Soninke and Berber, widely spoken in the salt-trading centres of Ouadane, Tinigi, Chinguetti, Tichit, Oualata, and Aoudaghost. The name is supposedly derived from the Berber term 'El Answar', their name for the Guiriganke or related Soninke group who founded these oasis towns. Azer's usage progressively declined beginning in the 16th century as it was replaced by Berber and Hassaniya.

Elements of the language were collected and studied by Heinrich Barth in the 19th century, Diego Brosset in 1930–1931 and Théodore Monod in 1934.

Some Berber and Nemadi communities in the Adrar Plateau, Araouane, Oualata, Néma and Taoudenni spoke Azer well into the 20th century. The language survives today mostly in place names such as Chinguetti, which means 'spring of horses'.

Notes

Sources

References

(1985). "The View from Awdaghust: War, Trade and Social Change in the Southwestern Sahara, from the Eighth to the Fifteenth Century". The Journal of African History.
"Lassana Drame, le dernier depositaire de l'Azer a tire sa reverence".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

soninke-language languages-of-mali languages-of-mauritania languages-of-senegal mande-languages sahel

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