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Nobiin language

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   Nobiin
   Nòbíín
   Spoken in: Egypt, Sudan
   Region: Along the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt and northern
   Sudan
   Total speakers: 495,000 (SIL 2005)
   Language family: Nilo-Saharan
     Eastern Sudanic
      Nubian
      Northern
       Nobiin
   Language codes
   ISO 639-1: none
   ISO 639-2: nub
   ISO/FDIS 639-3: fia
   Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA
   chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

   Nobiin is a Northern Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan phylum.
   "Nobiin" is the genitive form of Nòòbíí "Nubian" and literally means
   "(language) of the Nubians". Nubian peoples immigrated into the Nile
   Valley from the southwest, where other Nubian languages are still
   spoken, at least 2,500 years ago, and Old Nubian, the language of the
   Nubian kingdoms, is considered 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 river in
   southern Egypt and northern Sudan by approximately 495,000 Nubians, and
   present-day Nobiin speakers are almost universally bilingual in local
   varieties of Arabic ( Egyptian and Sudanese Arabic, respectively). Many
   Nobiin-speaking Nubians were forced to relocate in 1963-1964 due to the
   construction of the Aswan High Dam at Aswan, Egypt, to make room for
   Lake Nasser.

   There is no standardized orthography for Nobiin. It has been written in
   both Latinized and Arabic scripts; also, recently there have been
   efforts to revive the Old Nubian alphabet. This article adopts the
   Latin orthography used in the only published grammar of Nobiin, Roland
   Werner's (1987) Grammatik des Nobiin.

Geography and demography

   Before the construction of the Aswan dam, speakers of Nobiin lived in
   the Nile valley between the third cataract in the South and Korosko in
   the North. About 60% of the territory of Nubia was destroyed or
   rendered unfit for habitation as a result of the construction of the
   dam and the creation of Lake Nasser. At least half of the Nubian
   population was forcedly resettled. Nowadays, Nobiin speakers live in
   the following areas: (1) near Kom Ombo, Egypt, about 40 km north of
   Aswan, where new housing was provided by the Egyptian government for
   approximately 50,000 Nubians; (2) in New Halfa in the Kassala state of
   Sudan, where housing and work was provided by the Sudanian government
   for Nubians from the inundated areas around Wadi Halfa; (3) in the
   Northern state of Sudan, northwards from Burgeg to the Egyptian border
   at Wadi Halfa. Additionally, many Nubians have moved to large cities
   like Cairo and Khartoum. In recent years, some of the resettled Nubians
   have returned to their traditional territories around Abu Simbel and
   Wadi Halfa.
   Before the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nobiin people lived
   mainly between the first and the third cataracts along the shores of
   the Nile. Yellow dots show places where communities of Nobiin speakers
   are found today.
   Enlarge
   Before the construction of the Aswan Dam, the Nobiin people lived
   mainly between the first and the third cataracts along the shores of
   the Nile. Yellow dots show places where communities of Nobiin speakers
   are found today.

   Practically all speakers of Nobiin are bilingual in Egyptian Arabic or
   Sudanese Arabic. For the men, this was noted as early as 1819 by the
   traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in his Travels to Nubia. The forced
   resettlement in the second half of the twentieth century also brought
   more Nubians, especially women and children, into daily contact with
   Arabic. Chief factors in this development include increased mobility
   (and hence easy access to non-Nubian villages and cities), changes in
   social patterns such as women going more often to the market to sell
   their own products, and easy access to Arabic newspapers. In urban
   areas, many Nubian women go to school and are fluent in Arabic; they
   usually address their children in Arabic, reserving Nobiin for their
   husband. In response to concerns about a possible language shift to
   Arabic, Werner notes a very positive language attitude. Rouchdy (1992a)
   however notes that use of Nobiin is confined mainly to the domestic
   circle, as Arabic is the dominant language in trade, education, and
   public life. Sociolinguistically, the situation may be described as one
   of stable bilingualism: the dominant language (Arabic in this case),
   although used widely, does not easily replace the minority language
   since the latter is tightly connected to the Nubian identity.

   Nobiin has been called Mahas(i), Mahas-Fiadidja, and Fiadicca in the
   past. Mahas and Fiadidja are geographical terms which correspond to two
   dialectal variants of Nobiin; the differences between these two
   dialects are negligible and some have in fact argued that there is no
   evidence of a dialectal distinction at all. Nobiin should not be
   confused with the Arabic-based creole Ki-Nubi.

History

   Nobiin is one of the few African languages having a written history
   that can be followed over the course of more than a millennium. Old
   Nubian, preserved in a sizable collection of mainly early Christian
   manuscripts and documented in detail by Gerald M. Browne (1944-2004),
   is considered ancestral to Nobiin. 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. A dialect cluster related to Nobiin, Kenzi-Dongolawi, is
   found in the same area. The Nile-Nubian languages were the languages of
   the Christian Nubian kingdoms.

   The other Nubian languages are found hundreds of kilometers to the
   Southwest, in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan. 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. Greenberg (as cited in Thelwall
   1982) calculated that a split between Hill Nubian and the two
   Nile-Nubian languages occurred at least 2,500 years ago. This is
   corroborated by the fact that the oral tradition of the Shaiqiya tribe
   of the Jaali group of arabized Nile-Nubians tells of coming from the
   southwest long ago. The speakers of Nobiin are thought to have come to
   the area before the speakers of the related Kenzi-Dongolawi languages
   (see classification below).

   Since the seventh century, Nobiin has been challenged by Arabic. The
   economic and cultural influence of Egypt over the region was
   considerable, and, over the centuries, the Egyptian Dialect of Arabic
   spread south. Areas like al-Maris became almost fully Arabized. The
   conversion of Nubia to Islam after the fall of the Christian kingdoms
   further enhanced the Arabization process. In what is today Sudan,
   Sudanese Arabic became the main vernacular of the Kingdom of Sennar,
   with Nobiin becoming a minority tongue. In Egypt, the Nobiin speakers
   were also part of a largely Arabic-speaking state, but Egyptian control
   over the south was limited. With the Ottoman conquest of the region in
   the sixteenth century, official support for Arabization largely ended
   as the Turkish and Circassian governments in Cairo sometimes saw Nobiin
   speakers as a useful ally. However, as Arabic remained a language of
   high importance in Sudan and especially Egypt, Nobiin continued to be
   under pressure and its use became largely confined to Nubian homes.

Classification

   Nobiin is one of the about eleven Nubian languages. It has
   traditionally been grouped with the Kenzi-Dongolawi cluster, mainly
   based on the geographic proximity of the two (prior to the construction
   of the Aswan Dam, varieties of Kenzi-Dongolawi were spoken north and
   south of the Nobiin area, in Kunuz and Dongola respectively). The
   uniformity of this 'Nile-Nubian' branch was first called into doubt by
   Thelwall (1982) who argued, based on lexicostatistical evidence, that
   Nobiin must have split off from the other Nubian languages earlier than
   Kenzi-Dongolawi. In Thelwall's classification, Nobiin forms a
   'Northern' branch on its own whereas Kenzi-Dongolawi is considered part
   of Central Nubian, along with Birged (north Darfur) and the Hill Nubian
   languages ( Nuba Mountains, Kordofan province).

   In recent times, research by Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst has shed more
   light on the relations between Nobiin and Kenzi-Dongolawi. The groups
   have been separated so long that they do not share a common identity;
   additionally, they differ in their traditions about their origins. The
   languages are clearly genetically related, but the picture is
   complicated by the fact that there are also indications of
   contact-induced change (Bechhaus-Gerst 1996). Nobiin appears to have
   had a strong influence on Kenzi-Dongolawi, as evidenced by similarities
   between the phoneme inventories as well as the occurrence of numerous
   borrowed grammatical morphemes. This has led some to suggest that
   Kenzi-Dongolawi in fact is "a 'hybrid' language between old Nobiin and
   pre-contact Dongolawi" (Heine & Kuteva 2001:400). Evidence of the
   reverse influence is much rarer, although there are some late loans in
   Nobiin which are thought to come from Kenzi-Dongolawi (Bechhaus-Gerst
   1996:306).

   The Nubian languages are part of the Eastern Sudanic branch of
   Nilo-Saharan. On the basis of a comparison with seventeen other Eastern
   Sudanic languages, Thelwall (1982) considers Nubian to be most closely
   related to Tama, a member of the Taman group, with an average lexical
   similarity of just 22.2 per cent.

Sounds

   Nobiin has open and closed syllables: ág ‘mouth’, één ‘woman’, gíí
   ‘uncle’, kám ‘camel’, díís ‘blood’. Every syllable bears a tone. Long
   consonants are only found in intervocalic position, whereas long vowels
   can occur in initial, medial and final position. Phonotactically, there
   might be a weak relationship between the occurrence of consonant and
   vowel length: forms like dàrrìl 'climb' and dààrìl 'be present' are
   found, but *dàrìl (short V + short C) and *dààrrìl (long V + long C) do
   not exist; similarly, féyyìr 'grow' and fééyìr 'lose (a battle)' occur,
   but not *féyìr and *fééyyìr.

Vowels

   Nobiin has a five vowel system. The vowels /e/ and /o/ can be realised
   close or more open (as [ɛ] and [ɔ], respectively). Vowels can be long
   or short, e.g. jáákí 'fear' (long /aː/), jàkkàr 'fish-hook' (short
   /a/). However, many nouns are unstable with regard to vowel length;
   thus, bálé : báléé ‘feast’, ííg : íg ‘fire’, shártí : sháártí ‘spear’.
   Diphthongs are interpreted as sequences of vowels and the glides /w/
   and /j/.
   Monophthongs Front Central Back
   Close        i, iː         u, uː
   Close-mid    e, eː         o, oː
   Open                ɑ, ɑː

Consonants

   Consonant length is contrastive in Nobiin, e.g. dáwwí 'path' vs. dáwí
   'kitchen'. Like vowel length, consonant length is not very stable; long
   consonants tend to be shortened in many cases (e.g. the Arabic loan
   dùkkáán ‘shop’ is often found as dùkáán).

   CAPTION: Consonant phonemes

               Bilabial  Labio-
                         dental  Alveolar   Palatal  Velar  Glottal
     Plosive   p b               t d                 k ɡ
      Nasal      m                 n          ɲ        ŋ
    Fricative            f       s z       ç                (h)
    Affricate                              cç ɟʝ
      Trill                        r
   Approximant                     l          j        w

   The phoneme /p/ has a somewhat marginal status as it only occurs as a
   result of certain morphophonological processes. The voiced plosive /b/
   is mainly in contrast with /f/. Originally, [z] only occurred as an
   allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants; however, through the influx
   of loanwords from Arabic it has acquired phonemic status: àzáábí
   'pain', ázbíró 'aspirine'. The glottal fricative [h] occurs as an
   allophone of /s, t, k, f, g/ (síddó → híddó 'where?'; tánnátóón →
   tánnáhóón 'of him/her'; ày fàkàbìr → ày hàkàbìr 'I will eat';
   dòllàkúkkàn → dòllàhúkkàn 'he has loved'. This process is
   unidirectional (i.e. /h/ will never change into one of the above
   consonants) and it has been termed 'consonant switching'
   (Konsonantenwechsel) by Werner (1987:36). Only in very few words, if
   any, /h/ has independent phonemical status: Werner lists híssí 'voice'
   and hòòngìr 'braying', but it might be noted that the latter example is
   less convincing because of its probably onomatopoeic nature. The
   alveolar liquids /l/ and /r/ are in free variation as in many African
   languages. The approximant /w/ is a voiced labial-velar.

Tone

   Nobiin is a tonal language, in which tone is used to mark lexical
   contrasts. Tone also figures heavily in derivational morphology. Nobiin
   has two underlying tones, high and low. A falling tone occurs in
   certain contexts; this tone can in general be analysed arising from a
   high and a low tone together.
     * árré 'settlement' (high)
     * nùùr 'shadow' (low)

   In Nobiin, every utterance ends in a low tone. This is one of the
   clearest signs of the occurrence of a boundary tone, realized as a low
   tone on the last syllable of any prepausal word. The examples below
   show how the surface tone of the high tone verb ókkír- ‘cook’ depends
   on the position of the verb. In the first sentence, the verb is not
   final (because the question marker –náà is appended) and thus it is
   realized as high. In the second sentence, the verb is at the end of the
   utterance, resulting in a low tone on the last syllable.
     * íttírkà ókkéénáà?   (vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT-Q)   'Does she
       cook the vegetables?'
     * èyyò íttírkà ókkè.   (yes vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT)   'Yes,
       she cooks the vegetables.'

   Tone plays an important role in several derivational processes. The
   most common situation involves the loss of the original tone pattern of
   the derivational base and the subsequent assignment of low tone, along
   with the affixation of a morpheme or word bringing its own tonal
   pattern (see below for examples).

   For a long time, the Nile Nubian languages were thought to be
   non-tonal; instead, early analyses employed term like ' stress' or
   'accent' to describe the phenomena now recognized as a tone system .
   Carl Meinhof reported that only remants of a tone system could be found
   in the Nubian languages. He based this conclusion not only on his own
   data, but also on the observation that Old Nubian had been written
   without tonal marking. Based on accounts like Meinhof’s, Nobiin was
   considered a toneless language for the first half of the twentieth
   century. The statements of de facto authorities like Meinhof,
   Westermann, and Ward heavily affected the next three decades of
   linguistic theorizing about stress and tone in Nobiin. As late as 1968,
   Herman Bell was the first scholar to develop an account of tone in
   Nobiin. Although his analysis was still hampered by the occasional
   confusion of accent and tone, he is credited by Roland Werner as being
   the first to recognize that Nobiin is a genuine tonal language, and the
   first to lay down some elementary tonal rules.

Grammar

   A Nubian wedding near Aswan, Egypt
   Enlarge
   A Nubian wedding near Aswan, Egypt

Pronouns

   The basic personal pronouns of Nobiin are:
     * ày-
     * ìr-
     * tàr-
     * ùù-
     * úr-
     * tér-

            I
            you (singular)
            he, she, it
            we
            you (plural)
            they

   my      àyíín  án   ànní
   your    ìríín  ín   ìnní
   his/her tàríín tán  tànní
   our     ùùíín  úún  ùùní
   your    úríín  únn  únní
   their   téríín ténn ténní

   There are three sets of possessive pronouns. One of them is
   transparently derived from the set of personal pronouns plus a
   connexive suffix –íín. Another set is less clearly related to the
   simple personal pronouns; all possessive pronouns of this set bear a
   High tone. The third set is derived from the second set by appending
   the nominalizing suffix -ní.

   Nobiin has two demonstrative pronouns: ìn 'this', denoting things
   nearby, and mán 'that', denoting things farther away. Both can function
   as the subject or the object in a sentence; in the latter case they
   take the object marker -gá yielding ìngà and mángá, respectively (for
   the object marker, see also below). The demonstrative pronoun always
   precedes the nouns it refers to.
     * ìn íd dìrbád wèèkà kúnkènò   (this man hen one-OB have:3.sgPRESENT)
         'This man has a hen.'
     * mám búrúú nàày lè?   (that girl who be.Q)   'Who is that girl?'

Nouns

   Nouns in Nobiin are predominantly disyllabic, although monosyllabic and
   three- or four-syllabic nouns are also found. Nouns can be derived from
   adjectives, verbs, or other nouns by appending various suffixes. In
   plural formation, the tone of a noun becomes Low and one of four plural
   markers is suffixed. Two of these are Low in tone, while the other two
   have a High tone.
     * -ìì (L): féntí → fèntìì '(sweet) dates'
     * -ncìì (L): àrréé → àrèèncìì 'falls'
     * -ríí (H): áádèm → ààdèmríí 'men, people'
     * -gúú (H): kúrsí → kùrsìgúú 'chairs'

   In most cases it is not predictable which plural suffix a noun will
   take. Furthermore, many nouns can take different suffixes, e.g. ág
   'mouth' → àgìì/àgríí. However, nouns that have final -éé usually take
   Plural 2 (-ncìì), whereas disyllabic Low-High nouns typically take
   Plural 1 (-ìì).

   Gender is expressed lexically, occasionally by use of a suffix, but
   more often with a different noun altogether, or, in the case of
   animals, by use of a separate nominal element óndí ‘masculine’ or
   kàrréé ‘feminine’:
     * íd ‘man’ vs. ìdéén ‘woman’
     * tòòd ‘boy’ vs. búrú ‘girl’
     * kàjkàrréé ‘she-ass’ vs. kàjnóndí ‘donkey’

   The pair male slave/female slave forms an interesting exception,
   showing gender marking through different endings of the lexeme: òsshí
   'slave (m)' vs. òsshá 'slave (f)'. An Old Nubian equivalent which does
   not seem to show the gender is oshonaeigou 'slaves'; the plural suffix
   -gou has a modern equivalent in -gúú (see above).

   In compound nouns comprised of two nouns, the tone of the first noun
   becomes Low while the appended noun keeps its own tonal pattern.
     * kàdíís 'cat' + mórrí 'wild' → kàdììs-mórrí 'wild cat'
     * ìkìríí 'guest' + nóóg 'house' → ìskìrììn-nóóg 'guest room'
     * tògój 'sling' + kìd 'stone' → tògòj-kìd 'sling stone'

   Many compounds are found in two forms, one more lexicalized than the
   other. Thus, it is common to find both the coordinated noun phrase
   háhám ámán 'the water of the river' and the compound noun bàhàm-ámán
   'river-water', distinguished by their tonal pattern.

Verbs

   Verbal morphology in Nobiin is subject to numerous morphophonological
   processes, including syllable contraction, vowel elision, and
   assimilation of all sorts and directions. A distinction needs to be
   made between the verbal base and the morphemes that follow. The
   majority of verbal bases in Nobiin end in a consonant (e.g. nèèr-
   ‘sleep’, kàb- ‘eat’, tíg- ‘follow’, fìyyí- ‘lie’); notable exceptions
   are júú- ‘go’ and níí- ‘drink’. Verbal bases are mono- or disyllabic.
   The verbal base carries one of three or four tonal patterns. The main
   verb carries person, number, tense, and aspect information.
     * ày féjírkà sàllìr   (I morning.prayer pray:I.PRESENT)   'I pray the
       morning prayer.'

   Only rarely do verbal bases occur without appended morphemes. One such
   case is the use of the verb júú- 'go' in a serial verb-like
   construction.
     * áríj wèèkà fà júú jáánìr   (meat one:OB FUTURE go buy:IPRESENT)
       'I'm going to buy a piece of meat.'

Syntax

   The basic word order in a Nobiin sentence is Subject Object Verb.
   Objects are marked by an object suffix -gá, often assimilating to the
   final consonant of the word (e.g. kìtááb 'book', kìtááppá 'book-OBJECT'
   as seen below). In a sentence containing both an indirect and a direct
   object, the object marker is suffixed to both.
     * kám íwgà kàbì   (camel corn-OB eat:he.PRESENT)   'The camel eats
       corn.'
     * ày ìkkà ìn kìtááppá tèèr   (I you-OB this book-OB give:I.PRESENT)
       'I give you this book.'

   Questions can be constructed in various ways in Nobiin. Constituent
   questions ('Type 1', questions about 'who?', 'what?', etc.) are formed
   by use of a set of verbal suffixes in conjunction with question words.
   Simple interrogative utterances ('Type 2') are formed by use of another
   set of verbal suffixes.
            Type 1    Type 2
   I        -re/-le -réè
   you      -i      -náà
   s/he     -i      -náà
   we       -ro/-lo -lóò
   you (pl) -ro/-lo -lóò
   they     -(i)nna -(ì)nnànáà

   Some of the suffixes are similar. Possible ambiguities are solved by
   the context. Some examples:
     * mìn ámán túúl áányì?   (what water in live:PRES.2/3SG.Q1)   'What
       lives in water?'
     * híddó nííl mìrì?   (where Nile run/flow:PRES.2/3SG.Q1)   'Where
       does the Nile flow?'
     * ìr sààbúúngà jáánnáà?   (you soap:OB have:2/3SG.PRES.Q2)   'Do you
       have soap?'
     * sàbúúngà jáánnáà?   (soap:OB have:PRES2/3SG.Q2)   'do you sell
       soap?' / 'Does he/she sell soap?'
     * úr báléél árágróò?   (you (pl.) party.at dance:PRES1/2PL.Q2)   'Do
       you (pl.) dance at the party?'

Writing system

   Old Nubian, considered ancestral to Nobiin, was written in an uncial
   variety of the Greek alphabet, extended with three Coptic letters — ϣ
   "sh", ϩ "h", and ϭ "j" — and three unique to Nubian: ⳡ "ny" and ⳣ "w",
   apparently derived from Meroitic; and ⳟ "ng", thought to be a ligature
   of two Greek gammas.

   There are three currently active proposals for the script of Nobiin
   (Asmaa 2004, Hashim 2004): the Arabic alphabet, the Latin alphabet and
   the Old Nubian alphabet. 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.
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