The Nuer language (Thok Naath) ("people's language") is a Nilotic language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of

South Sudan South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of th ...

and in western

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...

(region of Gambela). The language is very similar to

Dinka The Dinka people ( din, Jiɛ̈ɛ̈ŋ) are a Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan with a sizable diaspora population abroad. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Jonglei to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out ...

and Atuot. The language is written with a Latin-based alphabet. There are several dialects of Nuer, although all share one written standard. For example, final , is pronounced in the

Jikany The Jikany Nuer are a section of the Nuer people who mainly live in the eastern part of Upper Nile state in South Sudan, particularly around Nasir in Nasir County. Civil war During the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005), between 1993 and ...

dialect but is dropped in other dialects despite being indicated in the Nuer orthography used by all.

Phonology

A phonological analysis has yet to be done. The following consonants may therefore not all be distinct. Voicing is not distinctive at the end of a stem, regardless of whether it's at the end of a word or utterance. Consonant clusters due to suffixes tend to be simplified. Dental consonants are written ''th dh nh'' in the practical orthography. is written ''ɣ''. Vowels may be long or short, modal or

breathy voice Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like ...

d. The latter are written with an underscore in the practical orthography, except for ''u'' and ''ä'' , where there is no modal-voiced vowel to contrast. is rare. (Curly brackets indicate the set of ''æ'' vowels.) Final is always breathy voiced. There does not appear to be a distinction between short ''a'' and ''ə''. Breathy is pronounced or . Faust & Grossman did not find strong evidence for lexical or grammatical tone, with a few exceptions such as the 1sg suffix and the plural suffix , which have a rising tone.

Dialects

''Ethnologue'' lists the following dialects of Nuer. *Eastern Jikany (Jekaing, Jikain) *Abigar *Western Jikany *Cien *Lou *Nyuong *Thiang *Bul Chol *Gawaar *Laak *Jagei (geai koay) *Leek *Dok *Haak

Nuer communities

There are different dialects spoken by Nuer groups living in various locations in

. Some of the Nuer people live in Western Ethiopia. They are called Jikany Nuer. The Nuer of the Upper Nile State are also called Jikany, and those in Jonglei State Lou, Gawaar, Thiang and Laak. There are also seven counties inhabited by the other groups of Nuer in the western part of the Upper Nile Province currently known as Unity State Bentiu. These counties include: * Guit County: Inhabited by Jikany kuec cieng community in the eastern Bentiu * Mayom County: Inhabited by Bul Chol Geah community in the western part of the state * Rubkona County: Inhabited by Leek community in the northern Bentiu * Koch County: Inhabited by Jagei community in the central Bentiu * Mayiandit County: Inhabited by Haak Bakol-kuoth community in the far south-western part of the state, they are also known as Gatbakol-kuoth. * Leer County: Inhabited by Dok community in the southern part of the state. * Payinjiar county:Inhabited by Nyuong community in the far southern part of the state. Among the 120,000 people at the United Nations Protection of Civilians Site Bentiu, Nuer is the preferred language for radio and news. Nuer-speaking Sudanese refugees have formed a significant community in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

Sample phrases

Nuer'': '' ''Naath dial diethɛ kɛ a lɔr kä päärkɛ kɛ ciaŋ malä a mäni cuŋkiɛn. Tekɛ kɛ ca̱r kɛnɛ nhök ti de lät kɛ raan kɛ dämaan a gɔa''. English:'' '' “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. ''(Article 1 of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...

)''

Writing system

The alphabet of Nuer uses 39 distinct letters, shown below in

uppercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

(majuscule) and

lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...

(minuscule) styles. A line under a vowel, like a̱, means that it is pronounced with

. The vowels ä, u, and final i are always breathy. A doubled vowel, like in the word ''raan'' (person), means that vowel is

long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...

. Nuer does have tone, but tone-based contrasts are not common.

History

The writing system was adopted in 1928 with minor changes being added over the history of the language. Both the

and the Nuer agreed that their languages were so different that they could never share written languages, but they did come up with several common principles. * final

interdental consonant Interdental consonants are produced by placing the tip of the tongue between the upper and lower front teeth. That differs from dental consonants, which are articulated with the tongue against the ''back'' of the upper incisors. No language is k ...

s would always be represented as th. * all voiceless

alveolo-palatal consonant In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...

s would be represented as c. * the finalized Nuer alphabet consists of the following characters, which are equivalent to the phonemes of the Nuer language: d, k, l, m, n, p, t, w, g, j, r, y, ŋ, ny, th, dh, nh, ɣ, c, a, e, i, o, u, ö

Language families

The Nuer language belongs to the following language families, going from smallest to largest. * Dinka-Nuer languages *

Western Nilotic languages The Western Nilotic languages are one of the three primary branches of the Nilotic languages, along with the Eastern Nilotic languages and Southern Nilotic languages; Themselves belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan. The abo ...

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 or to the Nile region of Africa. Dem ...

Kir–Abbaian languages The Southern Eastern Sudanic, Eastern ''n'' Sudanic, En Sudanic or Kir–Abbaian languages form one of two primary divisions of the Eastern Sudanic languages in the classification of Bender (2000). It is rejected as an established group in Staro ...

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 ...

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 and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. ...

References

External links

Nuer Project
- copious grammatical notes
Nuer Lexicon
an interactive online dictionary of Nuer
OpenRoad page on Nuer (Thok Nath)PanAfrican L10n page on Nuer
*

World Atlas of Language Structures The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural ( phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-R ...

information o
Nuer
* Wright Jay Frank,
Nuer noun morphology
', Master of Arts thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1999
online copy
.
Nuer Dictionary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nuer Language Languages of South Sudan Languages of Ethiopia Western Nilotic languages