Dinka language

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Dinka language

This article is for the language, for the ethnic group see Dinka
Dinka

The Dinka are a group of tribes of south Sudan, inhabiting the Bahr el Ghazal region of the Nile basin, Jonglei and parts of southern Kordufan and Upper Nile, Sudan regions....
.

The Dinka language, or as it is known in the language itself, is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Dinka

Dinka

The Dinka are a group of tribes of south Sudan, inhabiting the Bahr el Ghazal region of the Nile basin, Jonglei and parts of southern Kordufan and Upper Nile, Sudan regions....
, one of the largest and most powerful ethnic groups in Southern Sudan

Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
. With 2-3 million speakers, it exists in five major dialect divisions. Jaang is also used as a general term to cover all Dinka languages.

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Dinka

Sudan

Nuer language

The Nuer language is a Nilo-Saharan languages of the Western Nilotic languages group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of southern Sudan and in western Ethiopia....
subfamily, which is part of Western Nilotic, which in turn is part of Eastern Sudanic, the Nilo-Saharan subfamily with the largest number of member languages (95). Most closely related is Nuer

Nuer language

The Nuer language is a Nilo-Saharan languages of the Western Nilotic languages group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of southern Sudan and in western Ethiopia....
, the language of the Dinka's traditional rivals. Other major languages closely related within Western Nilotic are Shilluk

Shilluk

The Shilluk prefer to be known as Chollo, rather than the more widely known term, Shilluk, and their language as dhok-Chollo, dhok being the Chollo word for mouth....
, Luo/Dholuo

Dholuo language

Dholuo belongs to the Luo grouping within the Western Nilotic languages grouping of the Nilo-Saharan languages. It is spoken by the Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania, numbering about 3 million, who occupy parts of the eastern shore of Lake Victoria and areas south of there....
and Acholi

Acholi language

Acholi is a language primarily spoken by the Acholi people in the districts of Gulu District, Kitgum and Pader District, a region known as Acholiland in northern Uganda....
. (SIL Ethnologue, 2005 data)

"Nilotic" indicates that its speakers are found mainly along the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
, specifically the west bank of the White Nile

White Nile

The White Nile is a river of Africa, one of the two main tributary of the Nile, the other being the Blue Nile. In the strict meaning, "White Nile" refers to the river formed at Lake No at the confluence of the Bahr al Jabal and Bahr el Ghazal rivers....
, a major tributary flowing northwards from Uganda. The Dinka live north and south of the marshy Sudd

Sudd

The Sudd also called the Bahr el Jebel in Southern Sudan Sudan, is a vast swamp formed by the White Nile. The Sudd area is one of the largest wetland areas in the world and the largest freshwater wetland in the Nile basin....
area in southwestern and south central Sudan in three provinces: Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile, and Southern Kordofan. (See the Gurtong Peace Trust's Dinka .)

Linguistic features

Phonology

Dinka has a rich vowel system, with at least thirteen phonemically contrastive vowels. The underdots (<>) indicate "breathy" vowels, represented in Dinka orthography by diaereses <¨>):

	Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....		Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
	plain	breathy Breathy voice Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them....	plain	breathy Breathy voice Breathy voice is a phonation in which the vocal cords vibrate, as they do in normal voicing, but are held further apart, so that a larger volume of air escapes between them....
Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....	i	i?	u
Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel....	e	e?	o	o?
Open-mid Open-mid vowel The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel....	?	??	?	??
Open Open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth....			a	a?

There may be other distinctions. The Bor (southeastern) dialect is known to contrast modal voice, breathy voice, faucalized voice

Faucalized voice

Faucalized voice, also called hollow or yawny voice, is the production of speech sounds with an expanded larynx. It contrasts with harsh voice, in which the larynx is compressed....
, and harsh voice

Harsh voice

Harsh voice, also called ventricular voice or pressed voice, is the production of speech sounds with a constricted larynx, which generally involves epiglottal co-articulation....
in its vowels, in addition to its three tones. The ad hoc diacritics employed in the literature are a subscript double quotation mark for faucalized voice, , and an underline for harsh voice, . Examples are,

Voice	modal	breathy	harsh	faucalized
Bor Dinka
	diarrhea	go ahead	scorpions	to swallow

There are twenty consonant phonemes:

	Labial Labial consonant Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips or with the lower lip and the upper teeth . English is a bilabial nasal consonant sonorant, and are bilabial stop consonant , and are labiodental fricative consonant....	Dental Dental consonant In linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , , , and in some languages....	Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the Dental alveolus of the superior teeth....	Palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate . Consonants with the tip of the tongue curled back against the palate are called retroflex consonant....	Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the Soft palate)....
Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is produced with a lowered soft palate in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is blocked by the tongue....	m	n?	n	?	?
Plosive	p b	t? d?	t d	c ?	k g
Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...					?
Rhotic Rhotic consonant Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum....			?
Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and "typical" consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence....			l	j	w

Morphology

This language practices vowel ablaut or apophony

Apophony

In linguistics, apophony is the alternation of sounds within a word that indicates grammar ....
, the change of internal vowels (compare English goose/geese):

(Bauer 2003:35)

Tones

Dinka is a tonal language

Tonal language

A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. Tone is a Phonology common to many languages around the world . Various Chinese language languages such as Mandarin, Min Nan/Taiwanese Minnan and Cantonese are perhaps the most well-known of such languages....
.

Dialects of Dinka

Linguists divide Dinka into five main dialects corresponding to their geographic location with respect to each other:

Northeastern (Padang) (Dialects: Abiliang, Dongjol, Luac, Ngok-Sobat, Ageer, Rut, Thoi)
Northwestern (Ruweng) (Dialects: Alor, Ngok-Kordofan, Pan Aru, Pawany)
South Central (Agar) (Dialects: Aliap, Ciec, Gok, Agar)
Southeastern (Bor) (Dialects: Bor (Athoc,Gok),Duk (Nyarweng and Hol) Tuic
Southwestern (Rek) (Dialects: Rek, Abiem, Aguok, Apuk, Awan, Kuac,Lau, Luac/Luanyang, Malual, Paliet, Palioupiny, Tuic)

(See Ethnologue online for locations of dialects

Writing Dinka

Dinka is written with a Latin-based alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
. There have been variants since the early 20th century, but the current alphabet is:

External links

(access to SIL & Ethnologue pages)

Other resources

Beltrame, G. (1870). Grammatica della lingua denka. Firenze: G. Civelli.
Malou, Job. Dinka Vowel System. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington Publications in Linguistics. ISBN 0-88312-008-9.
Mitterrutzner, J. C. (1866). Die Dinka-Sprache in Central-Afrika; Kurze Grammatik, Text und Worterbuch. Brixen: A. Weger.
Nebel, A. (1979). Dinka-English, English-Dinka dictionary. 2nd. ed. Editrice Missionaria Italiana, Bologna.
Nebel, A. (1948). Dinka Grammar (Rek-Malual dialect) with texts and vocabulary. Instituto Missioni Africane, Verona.
Trudinger. R. (1942-44). English-Dinka Dictionary. Sudan Interior Mission
Tuttle. Milet Picture Dictionary English-Dinka. (at WorldLanguage.com)

Dinka language

Linguistic features

Phonology

Morphology

Tones

Dialects of Dinka

Writing Dinka

External links

Other resources

See also