Nubian Languages
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Nubian Languages
The Nubian languages are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. Nubian languages were spoken throughout much of Sudan, but as a result of Arabization they are today mostly limited to the Nile Valley#In Sudan, Nile Valley between Aswan (southern Egypt) and Al Dabbah. In the 1956 Census of Sudan there were 167,831 speakers of Nubian languages. Nubian is not to be confused with the various Languages of the Nuba Mountains, Nuba languages spoken in villages in the Nuba mountains and Darfur. More recent classifications, such as those in Glottolog, consider that Nubian languages form a primary language family. Older classifications consider Nubian to be a branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages, Nilo-Saharan phylum, a proposal that has low support among Linguistics, linguists due to a lack of supporting data. History Old Nubian language, Old Nubian is preserved in at least a hundred pages of documents, comprising both texts of a Christianity, Christian religious nature and d ...
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Nubi Language
The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi, ) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, Uganda, Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the Nubians (Uganda), Ugandan Nubians, many of whom are descendants of Emin Pasha's Sudanese soldiers who were settled there by the British Empire, British colonial administration. It was spoken by about 15,000 people in Uganda in 1991 (according to the census), and an estimated 10,000 in Kenya; another source estimates about 50,000 speakers as of 2001. 90% of the lexicon derives from Arabic language, Arabic,Ineke Wellens. ''The Nubi Language of Uganda: An Arabic Creole in Africa''. BRILL, 2005 but the grammar has been simplified, as has the sound system. Nairobi has the greatest concentration of Nubi speakers. Nubi has the prefixing, suffixing and compounding processes also present in Arabic. Many Nubi speakers are Kakwa people, Kakwa who came from the Nubian region, first into Equatoria, and from there southwards int ...
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Nilo-Saharan Languages
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari River, Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa: from Algeria to Benin in the west; from Libya to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the centre; and from Egypt to Tanzania in the east. As indicated by its hyphenated name, Nilo-Saharan is a family of the African interior, including the greater Nile Basin and the Central Sahara Desert. Eight of its proposed constituent divisions (excluding Kunama languages, Kunama, Kuliak, and Songhai languages, Songhay) are found in the modern countries of Sudan and South Sudan, through which the Nile River flows. In his book ''The Languages of Africa'' (1963), Joseph Greenberg named the group and argued it was a genetic (linguistics), genetic fam ...
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Nobiin Language
Nobiin, also known as Halfawi, Mahas, is a Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of ("Nubian") and literally means "(language) of the Nubians". Another term used is , meaning "the Nubian language". At least 2500 years ago, the first Nubian speakers migrated into the Nile valley from the southwest. Old Nubian is thought to be ancestral to Nobiin. Nobiin is a tonal language with contrastive vowel and consonant length. The basic word order is subject–object–verb. Nobiin is currently spoken along the banks of the Nile in Upper Egypt and northern Sudan by approximately 685,000 Nubians. In 2023 there were 183,000 Nobiin speakers in Sudan, and in 2024 there were 502,000 Nobiin speakers in Egypt. It is spoken by the Fedicca in Egypt and the Mahas and Halfawi tribes in Sudan. Present-day Nobiin speakers are almost universally multilingual in local varieties of Arabic, generally speaking Modern Standard Arabic (for official purpose ...
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Marble Stone With Southern-Nubian Inscription, Soba
Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is typically not foliated ( layered), although there are exceptions. In geology, the term ''marble'' refers to metamorphosed limestone, but its use in stonemasonry more broadly encompasses unmetamorphosed limestone. The extraction of marble is performed by quarrying. Marble production is dominated by four countries: China, Italy, India and Spain, which account for almost half of world production of marble and decorative stone. Because of its high hardness and strong wear resistance, and because it will not be deformed by temperature, marble is often used in sculpture and construction. Etymology The word "marble" derives from the Ancient Greek (), from (), "crystalline rock, shining stone", perhaps from the verb (), "to flash, sparkle, gleam"; R. S. P ...
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Old Nubian Manuscript
Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Maine, United States People *Old (surname) Music *OLD (band), a grindcore/industrial metal group * ''Old'' (Danny Brown album), a 2013 album by Danny Brown * ''Old'' (Starflyer 59 album), a 2003 album by Starflyer 59 * "Old" (song), a 1995 song by Machine Head *"Old", a 1982 song by Dexys Midnight Runners from ''Too-Rye-Ay'' Other uses * ''Old'' (film), a 2021 American thriller film *''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' *Online dating *Over-Locknut Distance (or Dimension), a measurement of a bicycle wheel and frame See also *Old age *List of people known as the Old *''Old LP'', a 2019 album by That Dog * * *Olde, a list of people with the surname *Olds (other) Olds may refer to: People * The olds, a jocular and irreverent online nick ...
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Alodia
Alodia, also known as Alwa ( Greek: Αρουα, ''Aroua''; , ''ʿAlwa''), was a medieval kingdom in what is now central Sudan. Its capital was the city of Soba, located near modern-day Khartoum at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers. Founded sometime after the ancient Kingdom of Kush fell, around 350 AD, Alodia is first mentioned in historical records in 569. It was the last of the three Nubian kingdoms to convert to Christianity in 580, following Nobadia and Makuria. It possibly reached its peak during the 9th–12th centuries when records show that it exceeded its northern neighbor, Makuria, with which it maintained close dynastic ties, in size, military power and economic prosperity. Alodia was a large, multicultural state administered by a powerful king and provincial governors appointed by him. The capital Soba, described as a town of "extensive dwellings and churches full of gold and gardens", prospered as a trading hub. Goods arrived from Makuria, the ...
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Musawwarat Es-Sufra
Musawwarat es-Sufra (Arabic: , Meroitic: Aborepi, Old Egyptian: jbrp, jpbr-ˁnḫ), also known as Al-Musawarat Al-Sufra, is a large Meroitic temple complex in modern Sudan, dating back to the early Meroitic period of the 3rd century BC. It is located in a large basin surrounded by low sandstone hills in the western Butana, 180 km northeast of Khartoum, 20 km north of Naqa and approximately 25 km south-east of the Nile. With Meroë and Naqa it is known as the Island of Meroe, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. Constructed in sandstone, the main features of the site include the ''Great Enclosure'', the ''Lion Temple of Apedemak'' and the ''Great Reservoir''. Most significant is the number of representations of elephants, suggesting that this animal played an important role at Musawwarat es-Sufra. Research The site of Musawwarat es-Sufra was originally mentioned by Linant de Bellefonds in 1822, and then shortly thereafter by Frédéric Cailli ...
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Soba (city)
Location of Soba in medieval times (below on the right) Soba is an archaeological site and former town in what is now central Sudan. Three kingdoms existed in medieval Nubia: Nobadia with the capital in Faras, Makuria with the capital in Dongola, and Alodia (Alwa) with the capital in Soba. The latter used to be the capital of the medieval Nubian kingdom of Alodia from the sixth century until around 1500. E. A. Wallis Budge identified it with a group of ruins on the Blue Nile from Khartoum, where there are remains of a Meroitic temple that had been converted into a Christian church. In the 10th century Ibn Selim el-Aswani described the city as large and wealthy, but he probably never visited it and modern archaeological investigations show it to have been a moderate centre. Built mainly of red brick, the abandoned city was plundered for building material when Khartoum was founded in 1821. Since the 1990s, development from the growth of suburbs in Greater Khartoum has ...
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Dongolawi Language
Dongolawi is a Nubian language of northern Sudan. It is spoken by a minority of the Danagla people in the Nile Valley, from roughly south of Kerma upstream to the bend in the Nile near al Dabbah, Sudan. ''Dongolawi'' is an Arabic term based on the town of Old Dongola, the centre of the historic Christian kingdom of Makuria (6th to 14th century). Today's Dongola was founded during the 19th century on the western side of the Nile. The Dongolawi call their language Andaandi "the language of our home". Nearly all Dongolawi speakers are also speakers of Sudanese Arabic Sudanese Arabic, also referred to as the Sudanese dialect (, ), Colloquial Sudanese ( ) or locally as Common Sudanese ( ) refers to the various related varieties of Arabic spoken in Sudan as well as parts of Egypt, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Sudanese ..., the lingua franca of Sudan. Arabic–Dongolawi bilingualism is replacive in the sense that Dongolawi is threatened by complete replacement by Arabic (Jakobi 20 ...
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Meroitic Script
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 Egyptian, and Meroitic Hieroglyphs, derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Meroitic Cursive is the most widely attested script, constituting ~90% of all inscriptions, and antedates, by a century or more, the earliest surviving Meroitic hieroglyphic inscription. Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 50 BC) described the two scripts in his Bibliotheca historica, Book III (Africa), Chapter 4. The last known Meroitic inscription is the Meroitic Cursive inscription of the Blemmye king, Kharamadoye, from a column in the Temple of Kalabsha (REM 0094), which has recently been re-dated to AD 410/ 450 of the 5th century. Before the Meroitic Period, Egyptian hieroglyphs were used to write Kushite names and lexical items. Though the Kingdom of Kush ended w ...
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Coptic Alphabet
The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language, the most recent development of Egyptian. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the uncial Greek alphabet, augmented by letters borrowed from the Egyptian Demotic. It was the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language. There are several Coptic alphabets, as the script varies greatly among the various dialects and eras of the Coptic language. History The Coptic script has a long history going back to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, when the Greek alphabet was used to transcribe Demotic texts, with the aim of recording the correct pronunciation of Demotic. As early as the sixth century BC and as late as the second century AD, an entire series of pre-Christian religious texts were written in what scholars term Old Coptic, Egyptian language texts written in the Greek alphabet. In contrast to Old Coptic, seven additional Coptic letters were derived from Demotic, and many of these (though not all) are ...
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Uncial
Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for Coptic and Nobiin. Development Early uncial script most likely developed from late rustic capitals. Early forms are characterized by broad single-stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple-stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. In the oldest examples of uncial, such as the fragment of '' De bellis macedonicis'' in the British Library, of the late 1st–early 2nd centuries, all of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however, is characteristic of later uncial usage. As the script evolved over the centuries, the characters became more com ...
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