Nobiin, or Mahas, is a Northern
Nubian language
The Nubian languages ( ar, لُغَات نُوبِيّة, lughāt nūbiyyah) are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. They form a branch of the Eastern Sudanic languages, which is part of the wider Nilo-Saharan phylum. Initially, ...
of the
Nilo-Saharan language family
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. T ...
. "Nobiin" is the
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
form of ''Nòòbíí'' ("Nubian") and literally means "(language) of the
Nubians
Nubians () ( Nobiin: ''Nobī,'' ) are an ethnic group indigenous to the region which is now northern Sudan and southern Egypt. They originate from the early inhabitants of the central Nile valley, believed to be one of the earliest cradles of ...
". Another term used is ''Noban tamen'', meaning "the Nubian language".
At least 2500 years ago, the first Nubian speakers migrated into the
Nile
The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin language, Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered ...
valley from the southwest.
Old Nubian
Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughou ...
is thought to be ancestral to Nobiin. Nobiin is a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emph ...
with contrastive vowel and consonant length. The basic word order is
subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
.
Nobiin is currently spoken along the banks of the Nile in
Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south.
In ancient ...
and northern
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
by approximately 610,000 Nubians. Present-day Nobiin speakers are almost universally
multilingual
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
in local varieties of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, generally speaking
Modern Standard Arabic
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or Modern Written Arabic (MWA), terms used mostly by linguists, is the variety of Standard language, standardized, Literary language, literary Arabic that developed in the Arab world in the late 19th and early 20th ...
(for official purposes) as well as
Saʽidi Arabic
Ṣaʽīdi Arabic (autonym: , ), or Upper Egyptian Arabic, is a variety of Arabic spoken by the Upper Egyptians in the area that is South/Upper Egypt, a strip of land on both sides of the Nile that extends from Aswan and downriver (northwards) ...
or
Sudanese Arabic. Many Nobiin-speaking Nubians were forced to relocate in 1963–1964 to make room for the construction of the
Aswan Dam
The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan L ...
at
Aswan
Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the ...
, Egypt and for the upstream
Lake Nasser
Lake Nasser ( ar, بحيرة ناصر ', ) is a vast reservoir in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before construction, Sudan was against the building of Lake Nasser because it would encro ...
.
There is no standardised
orthography
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
for Nobiin. It has been written in both
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
s; also, recently there have been efforts to revive the
Old Nubian alphabet. This article adopts the Latin orthography used in the only published
grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...
of Nobiin, Roland Werner's (1987) ''Grammatik des Nobiin''.
Geography and demography
Before the construction of the
Aswan Dam
The Aswan Dam, or more specifically since the 1960s, the Aswan High Dam, is one of the world's largest embankment dams, which was built across the Nile in Aswan, Egypt, between 1960 and 1970. Its significance largely eclipsed the previous Aswan L ...
, speakers of Nobiin lived in the Nile valley between the third
cataract
A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colors, blurry or double vision, halos around light, trouble w ...
in the south and Korosko in the north. About 60% of the territory of
Nubia
Nubia () (Nobiin: Nobīn, ) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between the first cataract of the Nile (just south of Aswan in southern Egypt) and the confluence of the Blue and White Niles (in Khartoum in central Sudan), or ...
was destroyed or rendered unfit for habitation as a result of the construction of the dam and the creation of
Lake Nasser
Lake Nasser ( ar, بحيرة ناصر ', ) is a vast reservoir in Southern Egypt and northern Sudan. It is one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. Before construction, Sudan was against the building of Lake Nasser because it would encro ...
. At least half of the Nubian population was forcibly resettled. Nowadays, Nobiin speakers live in the following areas: (1) near
Kom Ombo
Kom Ombo (Egyptian Arabic: ; Coptic: ; Ancient Greek: or ; or Latin: and is an agricultural town in Egypt famous for the Temple of Kom Ombo. It was originally an Egyptian city called Nubt, meaning City of Gold (not to be confused with t ...
, Egypt, about 40 km north of
Aswan
Aswan (, also ; ar, أسوان, ʾAswān ; cop, Ⲥⲟⲩⲁⲛ ) is a city in Southern Egypt, and is the capital of the Aswan Governorate.
Aswan is a busy market and tourist centre located just north of the Aswan Dam on the east bank of the ...
, where new housing was provided by the Egyptian government for approximately 50,000 Nubians; (2) in the
New Halfa Scheme
The New Halfa Project (Arabic: حلفا الجديدة) in Sudan is a 164,000 feddan site constructed in 1964 to house 50,000 Nubians displaced from Wadi Halfa, a town situated on the Nile near the border with Egypt, which was flooded when Lake N ...
in the
Kassala
Kassala ( ar, كسلا) is the capital of the state of Kassala in eastern Sudan. Its 2008 population was recorded to be 419,030. Built on the banks of the Gash River, it is a market town and is famous for its fruit gardens.
Many of its inhabit ...
, Sudan, where housing and work was provided by the Sudanese government for Nubians from the inundated areas around
Wadi Halfa; (3) in the
Northern state, Sudan
Northern ( ') is one of the 18 wilayat or states of Sudan. It has an area of 348,765 km² and an estimated population of 833,743 (2006). Northern Sudan was in ancient times Nubia. Jebel Uweinat is a mountain range in the area of the Egyptia ...
, northwards from
Burgeg to the Egyptian border at
Wadi Halfa. Additionally, many Nubians have moved to large cities like
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
and
Khartoum
Khartoum or Khartum ( ; ar, الخرطوم, Al-Khurṭūm, din, Kaartuɔ̈m) is the capital of Sudan. With a population of 5,274,321, its metropolitan area is the largest in Sudan. It is located at the confluence of the White Nile, flowing n ...
. In recent years, some of the resettled Nubians have returned to their traditional territories around Abu Simbel and Wadi Halfa.
Practically all speakers of Nobiin are bilingual in
Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian ( ar, العامية المصرية, ), or simply Masri (also Masry) (), is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic dialect in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and o ...
or
Sudanese Arabic. For the men, this was noted as early as 1819 by the traveller
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
Johann Ludwig (also known as John Lewis, Jean Louis) Burckhardt (24 November 1784 – 15 October 1817) was a Swiss traveller, geographer and Orientalist. Burckhardt assumed the alias ''Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallah'' during his travels in Arabia ...
in his ''Travels to Nubia''. The forced resettlement in the second half of the twentieth century also brought more Nubians, especially women and children, into daily contact with Arabic. Chief factors in this development include increased mobility (and hence easy access to non-Nubian villages and cities), changes in social patterns such as women going more often to the market to sell their own products, and easy access to Arabic newspapers. In urban areas, many Nubian women go to school and are fluent in Arabic; they usually address their children in Arabic, reserving Nobiin for their husband. In response to concerns about a possible language shift to Arabic, Werner notes a very positive language attitude.
[Werner 1987:31: "Zwar ist fast jeder nubische Mann zweisprachig, und durch die Schule dringt das Arabische immer weiter vor, doch konnte nie der 'Verlust der Sprachkompetenz' beobachtet werden." 'It is true that almost every Nubian man is bilingual, and that Arabic is pervading through education — but a 'loss of competence' was never observed.''/ref> Rouchdy (1992a) however notes that use of Nobiin is confined mainly to the domestic circle, as Arabic is the dominant language in trade, education, and public life. Sociolinguistically, the situation may be described as one of stable bilingualism: the dominant language (Arabic in this case), although used widely, does not easily replace the minority language since the latter is tightly connected to the Nubian identity.
Nobiin has been called ''Mahas(i)'', ''Mahas-Fiadidja'', and ''Fiadicca'' in the past. Mahas and Fiadidja are geographical terms which correspond to two dialectal variants of Nobiin; the differences between these two dialects are negligible, and some have argued that there is no evidence of a dialectal distinction at all.][Werner (1987:18—24), see also Bell (1974).] Nobiin should not be confused with the Nubi language
The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi, ar, كي-نوبي, kī-nūbī) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the Ugandan Nubians, many of whom are descendants of Emin Pasha ...
, an Arabic-based creole.
History
Nobiin is one of the few languages of Africa
The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families:
* Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern ...
to have a written history that can be followed over the course of more than a millennium. Old Nubian, preserved in a sizable collection of mainly early Christian manuscripts and documented in detail by Gerald M. Browne (1944–2004), is considered ancestral to Nobiin. Many manuscripts, including Nubian Biblical texts, have been unearthed in the Nile Valley, mainly between the first and fifth cataracts, testifying to a firm Nubian presence in the area during the first millennium. A dialect cluster related to Nobiin, Dongolawi, is found in the same area. The Nile-Nubian languages were the languages of the Christian Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia
Nobatia or Nobadia (; Greek: Νοβαδία, ''Nobadia''; Old Nubian: ⲙⲓⲅⲛ̅ ''Migin'' or ⲙⲓⲅⲓⲧⲛ︦ ⲅⲟⲩⲗ, ''Migitin Goul'' lit. "''of Nobadia's land''") was a late antique kingdom in Lower Nubia. Together with the tw ...
, Makuria
Makuria (Old Nubian: , ''Dotawo''; gr, Μακουρία, Makouria; ar, المقرة, al-Muqurra) was a Nubian kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the Nile River from the ...
and Alodia
Alodia, also known as Alwa ( grc-gre, Aρουα, ''Aroua''; ar, علوة, ''ʿAlwa''), was a medieval kingdom in what is now central and southern Sudan. Its capital was the city of Soba, located near modern-day Khartoum at the confluence of t ...
.
The other Nubian languages
The Nubian languages ( ar, لُغَات نُوبِيّة, lughāt nūbiyyah) are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. They form a branch of the Eastern Sudanic languages, which is part of the wider Nilo-Saharan phylum. Initiall ...
are found hundreds of kilometers to the southwest, in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains
The Nuba Mountains ( ar, جبال النوبة), also referred to as the Nuba Hills, is an area located in South Kordofan, Sudan. The area is home to a group of indigenous ethnic groups known collectively as the Nuba peoples. In the Middle Ages ...
of Kordofan
Kordofan ( ar, كردفان ') is a former province of central Sudan. In 1994 it was divided into three new federal states: North Kordofan, South Kordofan and West Kordofan. In August 2005, West Kordofan State was abolished and its territory ...
. For a long time it was assumed that the Nubian peoples dispersed from the Nile Valley to the south, probably at the time of the downfall of the Christian kingdoms. However, comparative lexicostatistic research in the second half of the twentieth century has shown that the spread must have been in the opposite direction. Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on ...
(as cited in Thelwall 1982) calculated that a split between Hill Nubian and the two Nile-Nubian languages occurred at least 2500 years ago. This is corroborated by the fact that the oral tradition of the Shaigiya tribe
The Shaigiya, Shaiqiya, Shawayga or Shaykia () are an Arab or Arabised Nubian tribe. They are part of the Sudanese Arabs and are also one of the three prominent Sudanese Arabs tribes in North Sudan, along with the Ja'alin and Danagla. The tribe ...
of the Jaali group of arabized Nile Nubians tells of coming from the southwest long ago. The speakers of Nobiin are thought to have come to the area before the speakers of the related Kenzi-Dongolawi languages (see classification below).
Since the seventh century, Nobiin has been challenged by Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
. The economic and cultural influence of Egypt over the region was considerable, and, over the centuries, Egyptian Arabic
Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian ( ar, العامية المصرية, ), or simply Masri (also Masry) (), is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic dialect in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and o ...
spread south. Areas like al-Maris became almost fully Arabized. The conversion of Nubia to Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
after the fall of the Christian kingdoms further enhanced the Arabization
Arabization or Arabisation ( ar, تعريب, ') describes both the process of growing Arab influence on non-Arab populations, causing a language shift by the latter's gradual adoption of the Arabic language and incorporation of Arab culture, aft ...
process. In what is today Sudan, Sudanese Arabic became the main vernacular
A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...
of the Funj Sultanate
The Funj Sultanate, also known as Funjistan, Sultanate of Sennar (after its capital Sennar) or Blue Sultanate due to the traditional Sudanese convention of referring to black people as blue () was a monarchy in what is now Sudan, northwestern E ...
, with Nobiin becoming a minority tongue. In Egypt, the Nobiin speakers were also part of a largely Arabic-speaking state, but Egyptian control over the south was limited. With the Ottoman conquest of the region in the sixteenth century, official support for Arabization largely ended, as the Turkish and Circassian governments in Cairo sometimes saw Nobiin speakers as a useful ally. However, as Arabic remained a language of high importance in Sudan and especially Egypt, Nobiin continued to be under pressure, and its use became largely confined to Nubian homes.
Classification
Nobiin is one of the about eleven Nubian languages
The Nubian languages ( ar, لُغَات نُوبِيّة, lughāt nūbiyyah) are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. They form a branch of the Eastern Sudanic languages, which is part of the wider Nilo-Saharan phylum. Initiall ...
. It has traditionally been grouped with the Dongolawi cluster, mainly based on the geographic proximity of the two (before the construction of the Aswan Dam, varieties of Dongolawi were spoken north and south of the Nobiin area, in Kunuz and Dongola respectively). The uniformity of this 'Nile-Nubian' branch was first called into doubt by Thelwall (1982) who argued, based on lexicostatistical evidence, that Nobiin must have split off from the other Nubian languages earlier than Dongolawi. In Thelwall's classification, Nobiin forms a "Northern" branch on its own whereas Dongolawi is considered part of Central Nubian, along with Birged (North Darfur) and the Hill Nubian languages
The Hill Nubian languages, also called Kordofan Nubian, are a dialect continuum of Nubian languages spoken by the Hill Nubians in the northern Nuba Mountains of Sudan.
Classification
The Hill Nubian languages are generally classified as being ...
(Nuba Mountains
The Nuba Mountains ( ar, جبال النوبة), also referred to as the Nuba Hills, is an area located in South Kordofan, Sudan. The area is home to a group of indigenous ethnic groups known collectively as the Nuba peoples. In the Middle Ages ...
, Kordofan
Kordofan ( ar, كردفان ') is a former province of central Sudan. In 1994 it was divided into three new federal states: North Kordofan, South Kordofan and West Kordofan. In August 2005, West Kordofan State was abolished and its territory ...
).
In recent times, research by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst has shed more light on the relations between Nobiin and Dongolawi. The groups have been separated so long that they do not share a common identity; additionally, they differ in their traditions about their origins.[In particular, the speakers of Nobiin claim to be the only real Nubians of African descent, whereas the Dongolawi believe they are descendants of Arabian immigrants (Bechhaus-Gerst 1996:298).] The languages are clearly genetically related, but the picture is complicated by the fact that there are also indications of contact-induced language change
Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...
(Bechhaus-Gerst 1996). Nobiin appears to have had a strong influence on Dongolawi, as evidenced by similarities between the phoneme inventories as well as the occurrence of numerous borrowed grammatical morphemes. This has led some to suggest that Dongolawi in fact is "a 'hybrid' language between old Nobiin and pre-contact Dongolawi" (Heine & Kuteva 2001:400). Evidence of the reverse influence is much rarer, although there are some late loans in Nobiin which are thought to come from Dongolawi (Bechhaus-Gerst 1996:306).
The Nubian languages are part of the Eastern Sudanic
In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania.
Nub ...
branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages
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 River, Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the ...
. On the basis of a comparison with seventeen other Eastern Sudanic languages, Thelwall (1982) considers Nubian to be most closely related to Tama, a member of the Taman
Taman may refer to: Places
*Taman Peninsula, a peninsula in southern Russia
**Taman Bay, an inlet of the Strait of Kerch off the peninsula
**Taman, Russia, a rural locality located on the peninsula
** Port of Taman, a seaport on the Peninsula
* ...
group, with an average lexical similarity of just 22.2 per cent.
Phonology
Nobiin has open and closed syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
s: ''ág'' ‘mouth’, ''één'' ‘woman’, ''gíí'' ‘uncle’, ''kám'' ‘camel’, ''díís'' ‘blood’. Every syllable bears a tone. Long consonants are only found in intervocalic position, whereas long vowels can occur in initial, medial and final position. Phonotactically
Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable stru ...
, there might be a weak relationship between the occurrence of consonant and vowel length: forms like ''dàrrìl'' 'climb' and ''dààrìl'' 'be present' are found, but ''*dàrìl'' (short V + short C) and ''*dààrrìl'' (long V + long C) do not exist; similarly, ''féyyìr'' 'grow' and ''fééyìr'' 'lose (a battle)' occur, but not ''*féyìr'' and ''*fééyyìr''.
Vowels
Nobiin has a five vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
system. The vowels and can be realised close
Close may refer to:
Music
* ''Close'' (Kim Wilde album), 1988
* ''Close'' (Marvin Sapp album), 2017
* ''Close'' (Sean Bonniwell album), 1969
* "Close" (Sub Focus song), 2014
* "Close" (Nick Jonas song), 2016
* "Close" (Rae Sremmurd song), 201 ...
or more open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999
* ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001
* ''Open'' (YF ...
(as and , respectively). Vowels can be long or short, e.g. ''jáákí'' 'fear' (long ), ''jàkkàr'' 'fish-hook' (short ). However, many nouns
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
are unstable with regard to vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
; thus, ''bálé'' : ''báléé'' ‘feast’, ''ííg'' : ''íg'' ‘fire’, ''shártí'' : ''sháártí'' ‘spear’. Diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
s are interpreted as sequences of vowels and the glides and .
Consonants
Consonant length is contrastive in Nobiin, e.g. ''dáwwí'' 'path' vs. ''dáwí'' 'kitchen'. Like vowel length, consonant length is not very stable; long consonants tend to be shortened in many cases (e.g. the Arabic loan ''dùkkáán'' ‘shop’ is often found as ''dùkáán'').
The phoneme has a somewhat marginal status as it only occurs as a result of certain morphophonological processes. The voiced plosive is mainly in contrast with . Originally, only occurred as an allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...
of before voiced consonants; however, through the influx of loanwords from Arabic it has acquired phonemic status: ''àzáábí'' 'pain'. The glottal fricative occurs as an allophone of (''síddó'' → ''híddó'' 'where?'; ''tánnátóón'' → ''tánnáhóón'' 'of him/her'; ''ày fàkàbìr'' → ''ày hàkàbìr'' 'I will eat'; ''dòllàkúkkàn'' → ''dòllàhúkkàn'' 'he has loved'. This process is unidirectional (i.e. will never change into one of the above consonants) and it has been termed 'consonant switching' (''Konsonantenwechsel'') by Werner (1987:36). Only in very few words, if any, does have independent phonemical status: Werner lists ''híssí'' 'voice' and ''hòòngìr'' 'braying', but it might be noted that the latter example is less convincing because of its probably onomatopoeic nature. The alveolar liquids and are in free variation as in many African languages. The approximant is a voiced labial-velar.
Tone
Nobiin is a tonal language, in which tone is used to mark lexical contrasts. Tone also figures heavily in morphological derivation
Morphological derivation, in linguistics, is the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as For example, ''unhappy'' and ''happiness'' derive from the root word ''happy.''
It is differenti ...
. Nobiin has two underlying
In finance, a derivative is a contract that ''derives'' its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index, or interest rate, and is often simply called the "underlying". Derivatives can be use ...
tones, high and low. A falling tone occurs in certain contexts; this tone can in general be analysed as arising from a high and a low tone together.
*árré 'settlement' (high)
*nùùr 'shadow' (low)
In Nobiin, every utterance ends in a low tone. This is one of the clearest signs of the occurrence of a boundary tone
The term boundary tone refers to a rise or fall in pitch that occurs in speech at the end of a sentence or other utterance, or, if a sentence is divided into two or more Prosodic unit, intonational phrases, at the end of each intonational phrase. I ...
, realized as a low tone on the last syllable of any prepausal word. The examples below show how the surface tone of the high tone verb ókkír- ‘cook’ depends on the position of the verb. In the first sentence, the verb is not final (because the question marker –náà is appended) and thus it is realized as high. In the second sentence, the verb is at the end of the utterance, resulting in a low tone on the last syllable.
*íttírkà ókkéénáà? (vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT-Q) 'Does she cook the vegetables?'
*èyyò íttírkà ókkè. (yes vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT) 'Yes, she cooks the vegetables.'
Tone plays an important role in several derivational processes. The most common situation involves the loss of the original tone pattern of the derivational base and the subsequent assignment of low tone, along with the affixation of a morpheme or word bringing its own tonal pattern (see below for examples).
For a long time, the Nile Nubian languages were thought to be non-tonal; early analyses employed terms like "stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
" or "accent" to describe the phenomena now recognized as a tone system.[The Egyptologist ]Karl Richard Lepsius
Karl Richard Lepsius ( la, Carolus Richardius Lepsius) (23 December 181010 July 1884) was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist, linguist and modern archaeologist.
He is widely known for his magnum opus ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien'' ...
spoke in 1880 of the ''Wohlklang'' of the Nubian language, and related this to the vowel distribution and the balance between long and short consonants. Carl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.
Early years and career
Meinhof was born in Barzwitz near Rügenwalde in the Province of Po ...
reported that only remnants of a tone system could be found in the Nubian languages. He based this conclusion not only on his own data, but also on the observation that Old Nubian had been written without tonal marking. Based on accounts like Meinhof's, Nobiin was considered a toneless language for the first half of the twentieth century.[In 1933 for example, Diedrich Hermann Westermann and Ida C. Ward wrote in their influential '' Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages'' that "Swahili and Nuba are good examples of languages which were probably once tone languages and which are said to have lost their tones" (p. 139).] The statements of ''de facto'' authorities like Meinhof, Diedrich Hermann Westermann, and Ida C. Ward heavily affected the next three decades of linguistic theorizing about stress and tone in Nobiin. As late as 1968, Herman Bell was the first scholar to develop an account of tone in Nobiin. Although his analysis was still hampered by the occasional confusion of accent and tone, he is credited by Roland Werner as being the first to recognize that Nobiin is a genuinely tonal language, and the first to lay down some elementary tonal rules.[Nowadays, Old Nubian is seen as a tonal language just like its descendant Nobiin. Browne (2002:23) writes that the Nobiin minimal pairs ''ín'' 'your (sg.)' vs. ''ìn'' 'this' and ''úr'' 'your (pl.)' vs. ''ùr'' 'head' appear in Old Nubian as ''en'' and ''our'' respectively. From the fact that the Nubians must have had a way to distinguish these forms even though they were written the same, he draws the conclusion that " ld Nubianprobably followed the tone system observable in modern Nobiin".]
Grammar
Pronouns
The basic personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s of Nobiin are:
There are three sets of possessive pronouns. One of them is transparently derived from the set of personal pronouns plus a connexive suffix ''–íín''. Another set is less clearly related to the simple personal pronouns; all possessive pronouns of this set bear a High tone. The third set is derived from the second set by appending the nominalizing suffix ''-ní''.
Nobiin has two demonstrative pronoun
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s: ''ìn'' 'this', denoting things nearby, and ''mán'' 'that', denoting things farther away. Both can function as the subject or the object in a sentence; in the latter case they take the object marker ''-gá'' yielding ''ìngà'' and ''mángá'', respectively (for the object marker, see also below). The demonstrative pronoun always precedes the nouns it refers to.
*ìn íd dìrbád wèèkà kúnkènò (this man hen one-OB have:3.sgPRESENT) 'This man has a hen.'
*mám búrúú nàày lè? (that girl who be.Q) 'Who is that girl?'
Nouns
Noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s in Nobiin are predominantly disyllabic
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "b ...
, although monosyllabic and three- or four-syllabic nouns are also found. Nouns can be derived from adjectives, verbs, or other nouns by appending various suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es. In plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
formation, the tone of a noun becomes Low and one of four plural markers is suffixed. Two of these are Low in tone, while the other two have a High tone.
* -ìì (L): féntí → fèntìì '(sweet) dates'
* -ncìì (L): àrréé → àrèèncìì 'falls'
* -ríí (H): áádèm → ààdèmríí 'men, people'
* -gúú (H): kúrsí → kùrsìgúú 'chairs'
In most cases it is not predictable which plural suffix a noun will take. Furthermore, many nouns can take different suffixes, e.g. ''ág'' 'mouth' → ''àgìì/àgríí''. However, nouns that have final ''-éé'' usually take Plural 2 (''-ncìì''), whereas disyllabic Low-High nouns typically take Plural 1 (''-ìì'').
Gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
is expressed lexically, occasionally by use of a suffix, but more often with a different noun altogether, or, in the case of animals, by use of a separate nominal element ''óndí'' ‘masculine’ or ''kàrréé'' ‘feminine’:
*íd ‘man’ vs. ìdéén ‘woman’
*tòòd ‘boy’ vs. búrú ‘girl’
*kàjkàrréé ‘she-ass’ vs. kàjnóndí ‘donkey’
The pair ''male slave/female slave'' forms an interesting exception, showing gender marking through different endings of the lexeme: ''òsshí'' 'slave (m)' vs. ''òsshá'' 'slave (f)'. An Old Nubian
Old Nubian (also called Middle Nubian or Old Nobiin) is an extinct Nubian language, attested in writing from the 8th to the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin and closely related to Dongolawi and Kenzi. It was used throughou ...
equivalent which does not seem to show the gender is ''oshonaeigou'' 'slaves'; the plural suffix ''-gou'' has a modern equivalent in ''-gúú'' (see above).
In compound noun
A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme. The English language, like many others, uses compounds frequently. English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their ...
s composed of two nouns, the tone of the first noun becomes Low while the appended noun keeps its own tonal pattern.
* kàdíís 'cat' + mórrí 'wild' → kàdììs-mórrí 'wild cat'
* ìkìríí 'guest' + nóóg 'house' → ìskìrììn-nóóg 'guest room'
* tògój 'sling' + kìd 'stone' → tògòj-kìd 'sling stone'
Many compounds are found in two forms, one more lexicalized
In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon.
Whether '' word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. M ...
than the other. Thus, it is common to find both the coordinated noun phrase ''háhám ámán'' 'the water of the river' and the compound noun ''bàhàm-ámán'' 'river-water', distinguished by their tonal pattern.
Verbs
Verbal morphology in Nobiin is subject to numerous morphophonological
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
processes, including syllable contraction, vowel elision
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
, and assimilation of all sorts and directions. A distinction needs to be made between the verbal base and the morphemes that follow. The majority of verbal bases in Nobiin end in a consonant (e.g. ''nèèr-'' ‘sleep’, ''kàb-'' ‘eat’, ''tíg-'' ‘follow’, ''fìyyí-'' ‘lie’); notable exceptions are ''júú-'' ‘go’ and ''níí-'' ‘drink’. Verbal bases are mono- or disyllabic. The verbal base carries one of three or four tonal patterns. The main verb carries person, number, tense, and aspect information.
* ày féjírkà sàllìr (I morning.prayer pray:I.PRESENT) 'I pray the morning prayer.'
Only rarely do verbal bases occur without appended morphemes. One such case is the use of the verb ''júú-'' 'go' in a serial verb
The serial verb construction, also known as (verb) serialization or verb stacking, is a syntactic phenomenon in which two or more verbs or verb phrases are strung together in a single clause.Tallerman, M. (1998). ''Understanding Syntax''. London: A ...
-like construction.
* áríj wèèkà fà júú jáánìr (meat one:OB FUTURE go buy:IPRESENT) 'I'm going to buy a piece of meat.'
Syntax
The basic word order in a Nobiin sentence is subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...
. Objects are marked by an object suffix ''-gá'', often assimilating to the final consonant of the word (e.g. ''kìtááb'' 'book', ''kìtááppá'' 'book-OBJECT' as seen below). In a sentence containing both an indirect and a direct object, the object marker is suffixed to both.
*kám íwgà kàbì (camel corn-OB eat:he.PRESENT) 'The camel eats corn.'
*ày ìkkà ìn kìtááppá tèèr (I you-OB this book-OB give:I.PRESENT) 'I give you this book.'
Questions can be constructed in various ways in Nobiin. Constituent questions ('Type 1', questions about 'who?', 'what?', etc.) are formed by use of a set of verbal suffixes in conjunction with question words. Simple interrogative utterances ('Type 2') are formed by use of another set of verbal suffixes.
Some of the suffixes are similar. Possible ambiguities are resolved by the context. Some examples:
*mìn ámán túúl áányì? (what water in live:PRES.2/3SG.Q1) 'What lives in water?'
*híddó nííl mìrì? (where Nile run/flow:PRES.2/3SG.Q1) 'Where does the Nile flow?'
*ìr sààbúúngà jáánnáà? (you soap:OB have:2/3SG.PRES.Q2) 'Do you have soap?'
*sàbúúngà jáánnáà? (soap:OB have:PRES2/3SG.Q2) 'do you sell soap?' / 'Does he/she sell soap?'
*úr báléél árágróò? (you (pl.) party.at dance:PRES1/2PL.Q2) 'Do you (pl.) dance at the party?'
Writing system
Old Nubian, considered ancestral to Nobiin, was written in a Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
-like script, an uncial variety of the Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
, extended with three Coptic letters — "sh" , "h" , and "j" — and three unique to Nubian: ⳡ "ny" and ⳣ "w" , apparently derived from the Meroitic alphabet
The Meroitic script consists of two alphasyllabic scripts developed to write the Meroitic language at the beginning of the Meroitic Period (3rd century BC) of the Kingdom of Kush. The two scripts are Meroitic Cursive, derived from Demotic Egyp ...
; and ⳟ "ng" , thought to be a ligature of two Greek gamma
Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...
s.
There are three currently active proposals for the script of Nobiin (Asmaa 2004, Hashim 2004): the Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
, the Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
and the Old Nubian alphabet. Since the 1950s, Latin has been used by 4 authors, Arabic by 2, and Old Nubian by 1, in the publication of various books of proverbs, dictionaries, and textbooks. For Arabic, the extended Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO, formerly ISESCO) is a specialized organization that operates under the aegis of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and is concerned with fields of education ...
system may be used to indicate vowels and consonants not found in Arabic itself.
More recent educational material implements the teaching and using of the Nubian alphabet.
Notes and references
Notes
References
* Abdel-Hafiz, Ahmed S.(2009) A Reference Grammar of Kunuz Nubian. Saarbrücken Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. MÜller, e.k.
* Adams, William Y. (1977) ''Nubia, Corridor to Africa.'' London: Allen Lane.
* Adams, William Y. (1982) "The coming of Nubian speakers to the Nile Valley", in Ehret, C. & Posnansky, M. (eds.) ''The Archeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History.'' Berkeley/Los Angeles, 11–38.
* Asmaa M. I. Ahmed, "Suggestions for Writing Modern Nubian Languages", and Muhammad J. A. Hashim, "Competing Orthographies for Writing Nobiin Nubian", in ''Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages No. 9'', SIL
SIL, Sil and sil may refer to:
Organizations
* Servis Industries Limited, Pakistan
* Smithsonian Institution Libraries
* SIL International, formerly Summer Institute of Linguistics
* Apex Silver Mines (former American Stock Exchange ticker symb ...
/Sudan, Entebbe 2004.
* Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne (1996) ''Sprachwandel durch Sprachkontakt am Beispiel des Nubischen im Niltal. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer diachronen Soziolinguistik.'' Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.
* Bell, Herman (1974) "Dialect in Nobíin Nubian". In Abd el-Gadir Mohmoud Abdalla (ed.) ''Studies in Ancient Languages of the Sudan''. Khartoum. 109–122.
* Bell, Herman (2000) 'A survey of Nubian Place-Names', ''Working Paper'', No. 19, United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names.
online version
* Browne, Gerald M. (2002) ''A grammar of Old Nubian''. Munich: LINCOM. .
* Burckhardt, Johann Ludwig (or John Lewis) (1819) ''Travels in Nubia''. London.
* Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva (2001) 'Converge and divergence in the development of African languages', chapter 14 of Aikhenvald & Dixon (eds.) ''Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics'', 393–411.
* Lepsius, R. (1880) ''Nubische Grammatik. Mit einer Einleitung über die Völker und Sprachen Afrikas''. Berlin.
* Rouchdy, Aleya (1992a) '"Persistence" or "tip" in Egyptian Nubian', in Nancy Dorian (ed.) ''Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 91–102.
* Rouchdy, Aleya (1992b) 'Urban and non-urban Egyptian Nubian: is there a reduction in language skill?', in Nancy Dorian (ed.) ''Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 259–266.
* Thelwall, Robin (1978) "Lexicostatistical relations between Nubian, Daju and Dinka", ''Études nubiennes: colloque de Chantilly, 2-6 juillet 1975'', 265–286.
* Thelwall, Robin (1982) "Linguistic Aspects of Greater Nubian History", in Ehret, C. & Posnansky, M. (eds.) ''The Archeological and Linguistic Reconstruction of African History.'' Berkeley/Los Angeles, 39–56.
online version with OCR errors
* Werner, Roland (1987) ''Grammatik des Nobiin (Nilnubisch)'' (Nilo-Saharan Studies vol. 1). Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
* Westermann, Diedrich Hermann & Ward, Ida (1933) ''Practical Phonetics for Students of African Languages''. London tc. Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.
External links
Nobiin audio samples and alphabet
Nobiin basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
* New website with Nobiin texts and audio samples: www.nobiin.com
*ELAR Archive
The Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) is a digital archive for materials on endangered languages, based at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). The Archive preserves digital collections, including audio and video recordi ...
br>deposit of Nobíin
a Nubian language
The Nubian languages ( ar, لُغَات نُوبِيّة, lughāt nūbiyyah) are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. They form a branch of the Eastern Sudanic languages, which is part of the wider Nilo-Saharan phylum. Initially, ...
by Kirsty Rowan & Herman Bell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nobiin Language
Nubian languages
+
Nubia
Languages of Sudan
Languages of Egypt