Masalit language

Masalit (autonym Masala/Masara; ماساليت) is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Maban language group spoken by the Masalit people in Ouaddaï Region, Chad and West Darfur, Sudan.

Masalit, known as the Massalat, moved west into central-eastern Chad. Their ethnic population in Chad was as of the 1993 census, but only 10 speakers of their language were reported in 1991.

Consonants

 * It has been stated that occasional click sounds and  may occur, however; they are considered to be rare.
 * Sounds can occur as geminated.
 * Sounds /t, m, n, ŋ/ can occur as palatalized [tʲ, mʲ, nʲ, ŋʲ] before front vowels.
 * only occur as a result of words of Arabic origin.
 * is not a phonemic sound, and is only heard before word-initial vowels.
 * Sounds only occur in word-initial position.

Sociolects
The Masalit language has two sociolects:
 * "Heavy" Masalit, spoken by higher-ranking people and those in the countryside, with a complicated agglutinative grammar
 * "Light" Masalit, spoken particularly in the home and in the market, with a somewhat simplified grammatical structure and many borrowings from Sudanese Arabic, the regional lingua franca and language of education.