Moro Language

Moro is a Niger–Congo language in the Heiban family spoken by the Moro people in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan, Sudan.

Writing system

A Moro orthography was developed by Christian missionaries in 1936 and a New Testament using it was published in 1960. This early spelling did not use capital letters. A revised spelling using capital letters is used in the 1993 New Testament publication.

Dialects

There are 7 dialects of Moro (Guest 1997a). Ethnologue names are given in parentheses.
*Laiyənia or LayeniaBlench, Roger. 2005
''A dictionary of the Moro language of the Nuba hills, Sudan''
m.s. (Laiyen)
*Tobəɽelda or ThetogovelaMoro Language Project
/ref> (Toberelda, Umm Gabralla)
*Uləba (Ulba)
*Lənəbwa (Nubwa)
*Nḏərria or Ndërria (Nderre)
*Ləmwarəŋ (Dhimorong; = Werria)
*Ləŋorəban (Longorban, Umm Dorein)

Each dialect corresponds to a separate clan, except for Ləmwarəŋ and Ləŋorəban, which are amalgamated into a single clan known as the Wërria. Thus, there is a total of 6 different clans.

References

Further reading

*Blench, Roger. 2005
''A dictionary of the Moro language of the Nuba hills, Sudan''
m.s.
*Black, K. & K. Black 1971
''The Moro language: grammar and dictionary''
Khartoum: Sudan Research Unit. MacDiarmid, P.A. and D.N.
*Edwards, G. 1941. ''Moro Dictionary''. (handwritten m.s.)
*Gibbard, George, Hannah Rohde & Sharon Rose. (2009)
Moro Noun Class Morphology
In M. Matondo, F. McLaughlin & E. Potsdam (eds.) ''Selected Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on African Linguistics''. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 106-117.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1997a
''Moro Phonology''
m.s.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1997b
''Moro Noun Classes''
m.s.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1997c
''Moro Verbs''
m.s.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1997d
''Moro Verbs Lexicon''
m.s.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1997e
''History of the Moro NT''
m.s.
*Guest, Elizabeth. 1998
''Miscellaneous Moro Grammar''
m.s.
*Jenks, Peter. (to appear) Noun phrases in Moro. In R. Blench & T. Schadeberg (eds.) ''Languages of the Nuba Mountains''.
*Jenks, Peter & Sharon Rose (2011). High Tone in Moro: Effects of Prosodic Categories and Morphological Domains. ''Natural Language and Linguistic Theory'' 29, 211-250.
*Jenks, Peter and Sharon Rose. (to appear) Syllable Weight and High Tone in Moro. ''Papers from the 45th Chicago Linguistic Society''.
*Rose, Sharon. The morphological structure of the Moro verb. In R. Blench & T. Schadeberg (eds.) ''Languages of the Nuba Mountains''.
*MacDiarmid. 1931. The languages of the Nuba Mountains. Sudan Notes and Records 14:149-162.
*Schadeberg, Thilo C. 1981. ''A Survey of Kordofanian''. Volume 1: The Heiban Group. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
*Stevenson, Roland C. 1956-57. "A survey of the phonetics and grammatical structures of the Nuba Mountain languages, with particular reference to Otoro, Katcha and Nyimang". ''Afrika und Übersee'' 40:73-84, 93-115; 41:27-65, 117-153, 171-196.
*Strabone, Andrew & Sharon Rose. (2012)
''Morpho-phonological properties of the Moro causative''
''Selected Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference on African Linguistics''. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Moro Marriage notesNotes on Language Use in the Moro Community in Khartoum

External links

Moro Language Project (UCSD)Moro Story Corpus (UC Berkeley)

{{Kordofanian languages

Definitely endangered languages
Heiban languages