Nubian languages

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Nubian languages

The Nubian language group, according to the most recent research by Bechhaus-Gerst comprises the following varieties:

Nobiin
Nobiin language

Nobiin is a Northern Nubian languages of the Nilo-Saharan languages phylum. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of N??b?? "Nubian" and literally means " of the Nubians"....
(previously known by the geographic terms Mahas or Fadicca/Fiadicca).

Kenzi-Dongolawi. Kenzi (or Kenuzi) is spoken north of Mahas

Mahas

The Mahas is ethnic group located in Northern Sudan along the banks of the Nile. They are named after the hereditary Ma'ahes caste of warriors and guards enlisted to protect temples, birthing chambers,cattle, the royal women and priestesses during dynastic times....
in Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
while Dongolawi is spoken south of Mahas around Dongola

Dongola

Dongola is the capital of the state of Northern, Sudan in Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. It should not be confused with Old Dongola, an ancient city located 80 km upstream on the opposite bank....
; they are generally considered two varieties of one language. With population displacement due to the Aswan High Dam there are communities of Nubian speakers in Lower Egypt

Lower Egypt

Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the Fertile Crescent Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea....
and in Eastern 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....
(Khashm el-Girba).

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Nubian languages'

Start a new discussion about 'Nubian languages'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

The Nubian language group, according to the most recent research by Bechhaus-Gerst comprises the following varieties:

Nobiin
Nobiin language

Nobiin is a Northern Nubian languages of the Nilo-Saharan languages phylum. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of N??b?? "Nubian" and literally means " of the Nubians"....
(previously known by the geographic terms Mahas or Fadicca/Fiadicca).
Kenzi-Dongolawi. Kenzi (or Kenuzi) is spoken north of Mahas
Mahas

The Mahas is ethnic group located in Northern Sudan along the banks of the Nile. They are named after the hereditary Ma'ahes caste of warriors and guards enlisted to protect temples, birthing chambers,cattle, the royal women and priestesses during dynastic times....
in Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
while Dongolawi is spoken south of Mahas around Dongola
Dongola

Dongola is the capital of the state of Northern, Sudan in Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. It should not be confused with Old Dongola, an ancient city located 80 km upstream on the opposite bank....
; they are generally considered two varieties of one language. With population displacement due to the Aswan High Dam there are communities of Nubian speakers in Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt

Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the Fertile Crescent Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea....
and in Eastern 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....
(Khashm el-Girba). Apart from these two distinct varieties spoken along the Nile, three other varieties existed.
Midob (Meidob) in and around the Malha volcanic crater in North Darfur
Darfur

Darfur is a region in Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by History of the Anglo-Egyptian co-dominium....
.
Birgid - originally spoken north of Nyala around Menawashei until the 1970s. The last surviving aged speakers were interviewed by Thelwall at this time. Some equally aged speakers on Gezira Aba just north of Kosti on the Nile south of Khartoum
Khartoum

Khartoum is the Capital of Sudan and of Khartoum . It is located at the confluence point of the White Nile flowing north from Lake Victoria, and the Blue Nile flowing west from Ethiopia....
were interviewed by Thelwall in 1980.
Hill Nubian – a group of closely related dialects spoken in various villages in the northern Nuba Mountains – in particular Dilling, Debri, and Kadaru.

Old Nubian

Old Nubian language

Christianity

Christianity is a Monotheistic religion #Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus as New Testament view on Jesus' life....
religious nature, written with an uncial

Uncial

Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Byzantine Empire scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic....
variety of the Greek alphabet

Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, extended with three Coptic

Coptic alphabet

The Coptic alphabet is the script used for writing the Coptic language. The repertoire of glyphs is based on the Greek alphabet augmented by letters borrowed from the Demotic and is first Alphabetic Script used for the Egyptian Language....
letters and three unique to Old Nubian, apparently derived from Meroitic

Meroitic script

The Meroitic script is an alphabetic script originally derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, used to write the Meroitic language of the Kingdom of Meroe/Kush....
. These documents range in date from the 8th to the 15th century A.D.

Anno Domini

, abbreviated as 'AD' or 'A.D.', and 'Before Christ', abbreviated as 'BC' or 'B.C.', are designations used to number years in the Julian calendar and Gregorian calendars....
Old Nubian is currently considered ancestral to modern Nobiin.

Synchronic research on the Nubian languages began in the last decades of the nineteenth century, first focusing on the Nile Nubian languages Nobiin and Dongolawi/Kenzi. Several well-known Africanists have occupied themselves with Nubian, most notably Lepsius

Karl Richard Lepsius

Karl Richard Lepsius was a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist and linguistics and pioneer of modern archaeology....
(1880), Reinisch (1879), and Meinhof

Carl Meinhof

Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof was a Germany Linguistics and one of the first linguists to study African languages....
(1918); other early Nubian scholars include Almkvist and Schäfer. Additionally, important comparative work on the Nubian languages has been carried out by Thelwall and Bechhaus-Gerst in the second half of the twentieth century.

Classification

Nubian is considered to be a subfamily within Eastern Sudanic

Eastern Sudanic languages

The Eastern Sudanic languages form a family of languages spoken from Northern Sudan to northern Tanzania, usually considered a subfamily of Nilo-Saharan languages, following Joseph Greenberg....
, and ultimately within Nilo-Saharan

Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari River and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet....
. Within Eastern Sudanic, it is thought to be most closely related to the Taman languages

Taman languages

Taman languages are a group of languages that are part of the Eastern Sudanic languages subfamily of the Nilo-Saharan languages family.They are divided in three dialects: Tama language and Sungor language , spoken in Chad and Sudan, and Mararit language, spoken only in Chad....
.

History

Of all the Nubian languages, the ones spoken along the Nile traditionally have received the most attention. Many manuscripts have been unearthed in the Nile Valley, mainly between the first and fifth cataracts, testifying to a firm Nubian presence in the area during the first millennium. Nobiin and a dialect cluster related to it, Kenzi-Dongolawi, are found in the same area. These languages were the languages of the Christian Nubian kingdoms

Nubia

Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
. Historical comparative research has shown that the Nile-Nubian languages do not form a genetic unit; the speakers of Nobiin arrived first in the area, followed later by the speakers of the Kenzi and Dongolawi varieties.

The other Nubian languages are found hundreds of kilometers to the southwest, in Darfur

Darfur

Darfur is a region in Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by History of the Anglo-Egyptian co-dominium....
and in the Nuba Mountains

Nuba Mountains

The Nuba Mountains are a mountain range in South Kordofan. The South Kordofan region is part of Kordofan province in central Sudan, Africa. The mountains cover an area roughly wide by long, and are 1500 to higher in elevation than the surrounding plain....
of Kordofan. In the past, there has been debate as to whether the Nubian languages spread to the Nile valley from Kordofan and Darfur or moved in the opposite direction. For a long time it was assumed that the Nubian peoples dispersed from the Nile Valley to the south, probably at the time of the downfall of the Christian kingdoms. However, comparative lexicostatistic research in the second half of the twentieth century has shown that the spread must have been in the opposite direction (Thelwall 1982, Adams 1982, among others). Greenberg

Joseph Greenberg

Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguistics, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic relationship of languages....
(as cited in Thelwall 1982) calculated that a split between Hill Nubian and the Nile-Nubian languages occurred at least 2,500 years ago. This account is corroborated by non-linguistic evidence — for example, the oral tradition of the Shaiqiya tribe of the Jaali group of arabized Nile-Nubians tells of coming from the southwest long ago.

Orthography

There are three currently active proposals for the script of Nubian: the Arabic alphabet

Arabic alphabet

The Arabic alphabet is the writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic language, Persian language, and Urdu language....
, the Latin 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....
and the Old Nubian alphabet

Old Nubian language

Old Nubian is an ancient variety of the Nubian languages, spoken until about the 15th century AD. It is ancestral to modern-day Nobiin language and other Nubian languages spoken in Nubia....
. Since the 1950s, Latin has been used by 4 authors, Arabic by 2, and Old Nubian by 1, in the publication of various books of proverbs, dictionaries, and textbooks. For Arabic, the extended ISESCO system may be used to indicate vowels and consonants not found in Arabic itself.

External links

(summaries of information, links)