Zaghawa-Wagi: Towards documenting the Sudanese dialectal variant of Zaghawa.

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

Zaghawa is said to be spoken by a total of 169.000 speakers in Sudan (North Darfur state) and Chad. This project focuses on the distinct Sudanese dialect Wagi. While this dialect is still spoken, it is rapidly giving way to Arabic due to a policy of Arabicization and large-scale displacements in the course of a civil war in Darfur. This pilot project explores the feasibility of a comprehensive documentation of Wagi: it aims to establish a field site and to collect preliminary sociolinguistic, lexical and natural data. Primary investigator: Isabel Compes

Project Details


Location: Sudan, Northern Africa, Africa Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Cologne Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £7,954.00 Commencement Date: 01/2011
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