Shilluk (natively , ) is a language spoken by the

Shilluk people The Shilluk ( Shilluk: ''Chollo'') are a major Luo Nilotic ethnic group that resides in the northeastern Upper Nile state of South Sudan on the western bank of the White Nile River in Upper Nile. Before the Second Sudanese Civil War, the Shill ...

South Sudan South Sudan (), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the north by Sudan; on the east by Ethiopia; on the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya; and on the ...

. It is closely related to other

Luo languages The dozen Luo, Lwo or Lwoian languages are spoken by the Luo peoples in an area ranging from southern Sudan to western Ethiopia to southern Kenya, with Dholuo extending into northern Tanzania and Alur into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ...

. The term Shilluk is a pronunciation of

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

origin.

Phonology

Vowels

Each of these vowels also exists in a long form and an overlong form which are

phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...

Advanced and retracted tongue root

Shilluk, like most

Nilotic languages The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples. Etymology The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile river, Nile River or to the Nile region of A ...

, differentiates vowels according to their place of articulation. They are either pronounced with advancement of the root of the tongue or with retraction of the root of the tongue. Gilley uses the terms "extended larynx" or "blown vowel". The vowels with advancement of the root of the tongue are , , , , and their corresponding long variants. The vowels with retraction of the root of the language are denoted by a macron below the letter: , , , , and and their corresponding long variants.

Consonants

Tone

Shilluk has a rich inventory of tones, with at least seven distinctive tone patterns or tonemes. There are three level tonemes: Low, Mid and High. In addition, there are four contours – the Rise and three falling configurations: Fall, High Fall and Late Fall. These are denoted by the following diacritics:

Syllable structure

Uninflected native stem

syllables A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

are overwhelmingly monosyllabic. With few exceptions, these monosyllabic stems typically consist of an onset, a vowel (nucleus), and a coda. Their structure is: C(C_j/w)V(V)(V)C.

Grammar

Morphology

Monosyllabic stems give rise to polysyllabic words through processes of

derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a ...

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

. For verbs and nouns alike, the most common prefixes are /a- ʊ-/, and the most common suffixes are /-Cɪ -ɪ -a (-ɔ)/. Further, alternations of vowel length and tone play an important part in inflectional morphology.

Verbs

Transitive verb classes

Shilluk transitive verbs have a phonological root that consists of a single closed syllable of the form /C(j/w)V(V)C/. "That is, the root vowel is either short or long, and clustering of consonants is restricted to the onset, where either of the semivowels /w,j/ may follow another consonant." There are seven classes distinguished by alternations in terms of vowel length and tone. These differences are illustrated by subject-voice past, past second-person singular, and object-voice imperfective in the table below.

Nouns

Noun inflection is characterized by

head marking A language is head-marking if the grammatical marks showing agreement between different words of a phrase tend to be placed on the heads (or nuclei) of phrases, rather than on the modifiers or dependents. Many languages employ both head-marking ...

: pertensive and construct-state are both inflections that mark the

head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple ani ...

, not the dependent. For example, English has ''a person's rodent'', where the head is ''rodent,'' and the possessive marking is on the dependent ''person's''. In contrast, Shilluk has a pretensive affix on the head (e.g., ''dúup'' = "rodent", ''dû́uup'' = "rodent belonging to").

Number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

is marked, but no predictable system has been identified. Instead, there are over 140 different patterns of number marking on nouns.

Numerals A numeral is a figure (symbol), word, or group of figures (symbols) or words denoting a number. It may refer to: * Numeral system used in mathematics * Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English ...

in Shilluk are nouns.

Orthography

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

alphabet was developed for Shilluk by

Christian mission A Christian mission is an organized effort to carry on evangelism, in the name of the Christian faith. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries. Sometimes individuals are sent and a ...

aries in the early 20th century. There are 29 characters in Shilluk orthography; 10 vowels and 19 consonants.

Oral literature

In 1912, Diedrich Westermann published ''The Shilluk People, their Language and Folklore'', which contains a wide selection of texts in the Shilluk language with English translations; there are 61 tales in addition to prayers, songs and riddles. The book also contains a Shilluk grammar. Here are some of the riddles: *"''nemei ki rei gen fa gute: tune dean.''" "Brothers who never hurt each other: the two horns of a cow." *"''nejok gwoti fen: dwei.''" "The black-white cow is making white the earth: the moon." *"''nemei doge lun fen: orom.''" "Two brothers, their mouth is turned down: the nose." *"''Agar agar, yat win: lek.''" "A long row of trees full of white birds: the teeth. (Along the rivers one sees frequently trees which are literally covered with snow-white birds.)" Hofmayr Die Schilluk

For a selection of over 200 Shilluk proverbs and riddles with German translations, see ''Die Schilluk. Geschichte, Religion und Leben eines Niloten-stammes'' by Wilhelm Hofmayr. This book also contains songs in Shilluk, and some of the songs have an accompanying musical transcription.Hofmayr, Wilhelm (1925)
''Die Schilluk. Geschichte, Religion und Leben eines Niloten-stammes.'' pp. 403-513.
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Sample text

Shilluktext.gif, Gwɛtti Dhɔ Cɔlɔ mi tyɛli malɔ Shilluktext000.GIF, Gwedd ki Dhøg Cøllø men nyänø Shilluktext2.GIF, Cigg dyërø mi dhaanhø ki Dhøg Cøllø ki yij wänyø mi cigg Pödh Cøllø

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shilluk Language Luo languages Languages of Sudan Languages of South Sudan