The Kuliak languages, also called the Rub languages,Ehret, Christopher (2001) ''A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan'' (SUGIA, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika: Beihefte 12), Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, . are a group of languages spoken by small

relict A relict is a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon. Biology A relict (or relic) is an organism that at an earlier time was abundant in a large area but now occurs at only one or a few small areas. Geology and geomorphology In geology, a r ...

communities in the mountainous

Karamoja Karamoja sub-region, commonly known as Karamoja, is a region in Uganda. It covers an area of 27,528km and comprises Kotido District, Kaabong District, Karenga District, Nabilatuk District Abim District, Moroto District, Napak District, Amuda ...

region of northeastern

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The ...

. Nyang'i and Soo are

moribund Moribund refers to a literal or figurative state near death. Moribund may refer to: * ''Moribund'' (album), a 2006 album by the Norwegian black metal band Koldbrann * " Le Moribond", a song by Jacques Brel known in English as "Seasons in the Sun ...

, with 20 and 50 elderly speakers respectively. However, Ik is vigorous and growing.

Word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

in Kuliak languages is verb-initial.Beer, Sam, Amber McKinney, Lokiru Kosma 2009. ''The So Language: A Grammar Sketch''. m.s.

Names

The Kuliak languages are also called the Rub languages by Ehret (1981), since Ehret reconstructed "Rub" to mean 'person' in Proto-Kuliak. He suggests that "Kuliak" may actually be a derogatory term used by neighboring Nilotic-speaking peoples to disparage Kuliak speakers as "poor," hence his preference for using Rub instead. However, Kuliak continues to be the most widely used name, and is preferred by

Roger Blench Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and w ...

, Terrill Schrock, Sam Beer and other linguists, who note that the name "Kuliak" is not perceived as offensive or pejorative by any Kuliak speakers.

Classification

Internal

Heine (1976) classifies the Kuliak languages as follows. According to Heine (1976), Soo and Nyang'i form a subgroup, Western Kuliak, while Ik stands by itself. According to Schrock (2015), Dorobo is a

spurious language Spurious languages are languages that have been reported as existing in reputable works, while other research has reported that the language in question did not exist. Some spurious languages have been proven to not exist. Others have very li ...

, is not a fourth Kuliak language, and may at ''most'' be a dialect of Ik.

External

Bender (1989) had classified the Kuliak languages within the

Eastern Sudanic languages 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. Nu ...

. Later, Bender (2000) revised this position by placing Kuliak as basal branch of

Nilo-Saharan 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. ...

. ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute f ...

'' treats Kuliak as an independent language family and does not accept

as a valid language family.

Evolution

BlenchBlench, Roger
Segment reversal in Kuliak and its relationship to Nilo-Saharan
notes that Kuliak languages do not have extensive internal diversity and clearly had a relatively recent common ancestor. There are many monosyllabic VC (vowel + consonant) lexical roots in Kuliak languages, which is typologically unusual among Nilo-Saharan languages and is more typical of some

Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

such as

Kunjen Kunjen, or Uw, is a Paman language spoken on the Cape York Peninsula of Queensland, Australia, by the Uw Oykangand, Olkola, and related Aboriginal Australian peoples. It is closely related to Kuuk Thaayorre, and perhaps Kuuk Yak. Two of i ...

. Blench considers these VC roots to have cognates in other Nilo-Saharan languages, and suggests that the VC roots may have been eroded from earlier Nilo-Saharan roots that had initial consonants.

Bernd Heine Bernd Heine (born 25 May 1939) is a German linguist and specialist in African studies. From 1978 to 2004 Heine held the chair for African Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany, now being a Professor Emeritus. His main focal points in re ...

(1976) has proposed a reconstruction of Proto-Kuliak. Significant influences from

Cushitic languages The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As ...

,Lamberti, Marcello. 1988. ''Kuliak and Cushitic: A Comparative Study''. (Studia linguarum africae orientalis, 3.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter. and more recently

Eastern Nilotic languages The Eastern Nilotic languages are one of the three primary branches of the Nilotic languages, themselves belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan; they are believed to have begun to diverge about 3,000 years ago, and have sprea ...

, are observable in the vocabulary and phonology of Kuliak languages. Blench notes that Kuliak appears to retain a core of non-Nilo-Saharan vocabulary, suggesting

language shift Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are percei ...

from an indigenous language like that seen in Dahalo.

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages:

References

* Heine, Bernd (1976). ''The Kuliak Languages of Eastern Uganda''. Nairobi: East African Publishing House. * Laughlin, C. D. (1975). "Lexicostatistics and the Mystery of So Ethnolinguistic Relations" in ''Anthropological Linguistics'' 17:325-41. * Fleming, Harold C. (1982). "Kuliak External Relations: Step One" in ''Nilotic Studies (Proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples, Cologne, January 4–6, 1982'', Vol 2, 423–478. * Blench, Roger M. (2006). Archaeology, Language, and the African Past. Lanham: Altamira Press. *Blench, Roger
Segment Reversal in Kuliak and Its Relationship to Nilo-Saharan
{{Authority control Language families Languages of Uganda