Nubian Languages

Nubian Languages

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

  1. Nobiin (previously known by the geographic terms Mahas or Fadicca/Fiadicca).
  2. Kenzi-Dongolawi, the largest Nubian language, with over a million speakers.
  3. Midob (Meidob) in and around the Malha volcanic crater in North Darfur.
  4. 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 were interviewed by Thelwall in 1980.
  5. 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 is preserved in at least a hundred pages of documents, mostly of a Christian religious nature, written with an uncial variety of the Greek alphabet, extended with three Coptic letters and three unique to Old Nubian, apparently derived from Meroitic. These documents range in date from the 8th to the 15th century A.D. 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 (1880), Reinisch (1879), and Meinhof (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.

Read more about Nubian Languages:  Orthography

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