page_title: Nilo-Saharan languages
section_title: Starostin (2016)
hierarchical_section_title: Nilo-Saharan languages / Internal relationships / Starostin (2016)
caption_attribution_description: English: Language Families of Africa North of the Equator. Nilo-Saharan is split into several families based on Starostin (2016). Language isolates are not included, apart from Shabo
context_page_description: The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east.
  As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions are found in the modern two nations of Sudan and South Sudan, through which the Nile River flows.
  In his book The Languages of Africa, Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic family. It contains the languages which are not included in the Niger–Congo, Afroasiatic or Khoisan groups.
context_section_description: Georgiy Starostin (2016), using lexicostatistics based on Swadesh lists, is more inclusive than Glottolog, and in addition finds probable and possible links between the families that will require reconstruction of the protolanguages for confirmation.
  In addition to the families listed in Glottolog (previous section), Starostin considers the following to be established:
  Northern "K" Eastern Sudanic or "NNT" (Nubian, Nara, and Tama; see below for Nyima)
  Southern "N" Eastern Sudanic (Surmic, Temein, Jebel, Daju, Nilotic), though their exact relationships to each other remain obscure
  Central Sudanic (including Birri and Kresh–Aja, which may prove to be closest to each other)
  Koman (including Gule)
  A relationship of Nyima with Nubian, Nara, and Tama (NNT) is considered "highly likely" and close enough that proper comparative work should be able to demonstrate the connection if it's valid, though it would fall outside NNT proper (see Eastern Sudanic languages). 
  Other units that are "highly likely" to eventually prove to be valid families are:
  East Sudanic as a whole
  Central Sudanic – Kadu (Central Sudanic + Kadugli–Krongo)
  Maba–Kunama (Maban + Kunama)
  Komuz (Koman + Gumuz)
  In summary, at this level of certainty, "Nilo-Saharan" constitutes ten distinct and separate language families: Eastern Sudanic, Central Sudanic – Kadu, Maba–Kunama, Komuz, Saharan, Songhai, Kuliak, Fur, Berta, and Shabo. 
  Possible further "deep" connections, which cannot be evaluated until the proper comparative work on the constituent branches has been completed, are:
  Eastern Sudanic + Fur + Berta
  Central Sudanic – Kadu + Maba–Kunama
  There are faint suggestions that Eastern and Central Sudanic may be related (essentially the old Chari–Nile clade), though that possibility is "unexplorable under current conditions" and could be complicated if Niger–Congo were added to the comparison. Starostin finds no evidence that the Komuz, Kuliak, Saharan, Songhai, or Shabo languages are related to any of the other Nilo-Saharan languages. Mimi-D and Meroitic were not considered, though Starostin had previously proposed that Mimi-D was also an isolate despite its slight similarity to Central Sudanic.
  In a follow up study published in 2017, Starostin reiterated his previous points as well as explicitly accepting a genetic relationship between Macro-East Sudanic and Macro-Central Sudanic. Starostin names this proposal "Macro-Sudanic"
caption: Starostin's "Macro-Sudanic" in purple, surrounding language families shown as well.
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