In the Jordanian capital of Amman, Khaled, a Sudanese father hailing from South Darfur, feels detached from his own roots. Born and raised in Sudan, he speaks Arabic fluently but struggles to recall a few words of his mother tongue, Fulani, that might give his children a glimpse of a language he fears will be extinct in a few decades.
A subbranch of the huge Niger-Congo language family, Fulani, also known as Fulfulde, has historically been spoken by nomadic pastoralists and is the most widely distributed language group in Africa, its range spreading from Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea in the west to Sudan in the east, and south into Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Congo. Yet determining the actual number of Fulani speakers is not an easy task for many reasons, including the fact that many countries do not record different ethnic backgrounds in their censuses. Almost two decades ago, the “Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World” estimated that the number of speakers ranged between 13 and 17 million.
“Now I can understand what people are saying (in Fulani), but I may not be able to respond,” says Khaled, who went to school to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a radio anchor. Like others quoted in this essay, he asks for anonymity to discuss government repression.
In his hometown, radio was the only source of entertainment and the “only way we stayed connected to the world.” He remembers how he and his grandmother were so attached to the radio that they would switch it on after the dawn prayers and leave it on all day and until the late hours of the evening.
For decades, many people resisted sending their children to school in the rural areas of Sudan. According to accounts of several Sudanese refugees who hail from rural areas, there was a widespread belief that formal schools were useless, and people preferred sending their children to a “khalwa,” a school that teaches the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad. This kind of school was believed to be of greater benefit to people in this world and the afterlife while formal schools were simply associated with the West and infidels. To his advantage, Khaled’s family was different and the children were encouraged to pursue formal education. One day, as he sat with his grandmother listening to Omdurman radio, the only Sudanese radio station they knew at the time, he said, “I promise you I will go to Omdurman and send you my greetings on air.”
Shortly afterward, he enrolled in school at a time when simply uttering a word in his mother tongue was prohibited. He explains that this was one of the policies of the Sudanese government, which wanted to have one identity for all, erasing the cultures and histories of local tribes in the process. It was also a way of tightening the regime’s grip on power, ensuring that the masses adhered to its vision.
Khaled still spoke both languages; there were times when he would simply forget the rules and, in a slip of the tongue, speak to a fellow pupil in Fulani. This was not tolerated, and children were flogged to ensure that Arabic remained the only language they spoke on the school premises. Looking back, Khaled believes the punishment was “harsh and inhumane … it was simply unjustified.”
Sudanese human rights activist Mohamed Badawi told New Lines that the previous regime in Sudan wanted to “ideologically reshape” Sudanese people. In a country with over 500 ethnic and subethnic groups, the Arabic language was deemed a powerful tool that could guarantee the loyalty of all subjects.
Members of non-Arabic speaking tribes were made to believe that their languages were inferior and these were often referred to as “rutana,” an Arabic word for the humming of birds or the incomprehensible babbling of babies, among other things. “If you had a clash with a student, he would just go and claim that you were speaking in rutana. … Rutana was the language of birds, so if we wanted to become humans, we had to speak Arabic,” recalls Khaled.
Khaled admits he gradually forgot his mother tongue, eventually becoming incapable of communicating with some of the older members of his family. In his words, this was a “great shame,” as people perceived relatives who could not speak with them as snobs who went to school and forgot their own roots. They did not understand that people like Khaled wanted to avoid being present on social occasions because they could no longer communicate in Fulani.
While the situation might have improved back in Sudan, it is much worse today for Khaled as he communicates with his relatives over the phone. The minute they say hello, he feels it: His vocabulary is just too limited — not even adequate for a quick phone call. As a result, many relatives passed away and many others got married without him being able to either console or celebrate, in person or over the phone. Khaled believes that people like him are fated to be rejected by both family and the state. Their extended families look at them as outsiders who no longer belong, and the state looks at them as second-class citizens, even if they speak Arabic like native speakers. After so many years, he wonders if he made the right decisions.
Over three decades, the Sudanese state adopted “repressive policies and implemented strategies to create an Arabic-speaking state,” Badawi says. Taking stances that showed solidarity with Arab causes, it was clear that the state wanted to create an identity that was mainly Arab and Islamic.
Badawi says this was evident in a speech that former President Omar al-Bashir gave in Gedaref, a city in eastern Sudan, shortly before the secession of South Sudan in 2011. In the speech, the now-deposed president spoke of implementing Sharia in northern Sudan should South Sudan seek independence and claimed that the “symbiosis between Islamic Sharia and the Arabic language is well known,” recalls Badawi, who is also a researcher at the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies.
In the Egyptian capital of Cairo, I meet with Nour, a 36-year-old Sudanese refugee who speaks the Fur language. Born in a village that has now disappeared due to the conflict, Nour thought of dropping out of school when he was a young child. He recalls that many of his peers did actually drop out when they were severely punished for failing to learn Arabic, a language they simply did not speak at home. “I told my father that I wanted to leave school and go study Quran instead, but he refused and said this was not possible,” says Nour, who, despite those hardships, dreamed of pursuing his higher education to become a teacher at a time when his own village had very few qualified ones.
He struggled at first, but as time passed he became better at Arabic and even started bullying peers who were not as fluent. “We became proud of ourselves,” he says. “We were made to believe that [speaking Arabic] was the first step toward gaining knowledge.” When he started studying the English language in university, he realized the magnitude of his mistake. Only then did he realize that the popular word rutana, which was used to belittle any language other than Arabic, had no basis at all, and that languages in fact were supposed to be equal — that all languages simply mattered.
Decades after they were forced to abandon their language, many of Nour’s peers regret the loss of a part of their identity. As we sit together in Cairo, he tells me about a romantic song in Fur, a Nilo-Saharan language mainly spoken in western Sudan, and tries to translate it. He tries, but then stops. He feels that the essence of the song is simply lost in translation, that you could translate it so others would understand, but the meaning would not be the same. There is a certain vibe that can only be felt if you speak the language. It is simply not as romantic in Arabic.
Experts like Badawi argue that neglecting cultural diversity in Sudan was one of the factors that led to the escalation of conflict in the country since 2003. By failing to promote the concept of citizenship, the role of the tribe became even more prominent. “When a person does not feel that he/she is culturally represented in the existing policies, the concept of the state becomes diminished in people’s minds,” Badawi says, adding that other political, security and economic factors have also contributed to the escalation.
Although the toppled regime of al-Bashir often accused people who sought to teach Fur of being rebels, and many of them were prosecuted, people like Mohamed Yusuf, a 30-year-old Sudanese refugee, learned the language at a center in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. People were ready to fight against the “hegemony of one specific language” after the 2003 war in Darfur, according to Yusuf.
Previous research, particularly by Kerry Mae Corbett of the University of North Dakota, found that the conflict in Darfur was indeed a turning point, changing people’s attitudes toward their own languages. In the words of one interviewee in Corbett’s research, the “Fur cling to their language now [more] than before [for] political and cultural reasons. They are looking for self-assertion.” The conflict was an eye-opening event that made people understand their rights and “the value of their culture and identity,” according to another research participant.
As soon as he arrived in Cairo in 2019, Yusuf, who also holds a bachelor’s degree in English language and geography, met with Sudanese intellectuals and came across a society that catered to the needs of people belonging to the Fur tribe but did not teach the language. Working with Adam Issa, another young Sudanese refugee, they launched a three-year course that teaches members of the community the language from A to Z.
Issa proudly speaks of the extensive history of the Fur people, who had had their own state up until 1916. When the last sultan of Darfur, Ali Dinar, died, the region was annexed and became part of Sudan as we know it today. Both Yusuf and Issa seem to be keen on explaining how the state of Darfur had a history of its own, its own currency and very good relations with other states. They simply want people to feel proud of this heritage and not ashamed of not being Arab.
In a country as diverse as Sudan, Badawi believes a federal system could have been a better choice, helping preserve the diverse local cultures and languages. However, the Sudanese government failed to manage cultural diversity in the country and even practiced what he dubbed “cultural substitution” at certain points in its modern history. For example, he recalls that a hospital in El Fasher had Arabic names written on a board so new parents could choose from them. He saw this as yet another attempt to impose a certain culture, as choosing a name, which could otherwise be a private matter that only concerned parents or relatives, was used to “indirectly implement certain policies and advocate for adopting Arabic names so they could be predominant.”
Celebrating International Mother Language Day, which is observed on Feb. 21, the U.N. Integrated Transition Assistance Mission Sudan posted that “there are more than 160 languages spoken by 123 racial groups in Sudan. However, fewer than 10,000 people speak around 100 of these languages, which means they face the risk of extinction.”
While tens of peace agreements in Sudan addressed participation in political authority, they continued to turn a blind eye to the root causes of conflict and the management of diversity. There was one exception, according to Badawi, as the 2020 Juba Agreement for Peace in Sudan “stipulated that Nubian language was to be recognized as an official language” — though Nubian is only one of many languages in the region.
Despite such developments, Badawi believes little has changed, but Yusuf tends to disagree and thinks change is slowly taking place. The latter tells us that many singers in Sudan are now singing about the glory of the Fur civilization. Social media has helped raise awareness, too. In addition, it has become more common to see members of the Fur tribe in high-ranking positions. These people are giving their children names inspired by the Fur culture, and for a change, they are not hiding it.
For all of these reasons, Yusuf believes that younger generations have actually found role models they can relate and look up to. They no longer have to be labeled as speakers of rutana but can identify as Fur and still be proud.
Today, as Sudan grapples with a civil war that has killed more than 20,000 people, it is hard to see the road ahead. While the war is often depicted as a power struggle between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces, many experts argue that it goes way beyond this seemingly simple clash of interests. As Hamdy A. Hassan, a professor at Zayed University, puts it: “Delving into the history of Sudan … reveals that the country suffers from a long-standing identity crisis that has fuelled the numerous rebellions.”
As people in Sudan struggle to survive, it may be too soon to reach conclusions on issues related to identity. In Badawi’s opinion, it took some time for perspectives on language and identity to shift following the 2003 war in Darfur. In light of the current polarization in Sudan, “tribal unity may be stronger than the national unity, but the language issue is not on the radar until the war comes to an end. Once this happens, the impact will begin to manifest as communities begin to think of their identities and composition,” he says.
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