The Nubian languages set up a linguistic group which includes (Bechhaus-Gerst):
- the Nobiin (old Mahas or Fadicca/Fiadicca);
- the Dongolawi and the Kenzi;
- the Midob (Meidob);
- the Birgid;
- the " Nubian of the collines" - which gathers the dialects of the Nubian mountains.
The Ancien Nubian is preserved on a hundred handwritten sheets, in particular Christian religious texts, written with a form Onciale of the Greek alphabet, supplemented letters coptes and letters probably derived from the méroïtique one. These documents date from VIIIe in XVe century. The old Nubian is the ancestor of the Nobiin.
Writing
There are three principal proposals to write the Nubian: the Arabic alphabet, the Latin alphabet and the alphabet of the old Nubian.Since the years 1950, the Latin alphabet was used by 4 authors, Arabic by 2 and the Nubian by only one, within the framework of the publication of books, dictionaries and documents various.
For Arabic, the system SESCO is used to note the vowels and consonants which do not exist in the Arabic alphabet.
History
From all the Nubian languages, those spoken along the Nile received much more attention. Several manuscripts were unearthed in the Valley of the Nile, mainly between the fourth and the fifth cataract, testifying to a Nubian presence lasting the first millenium. Nobiin and its close cousin the Kenzi-Dongolawi, also left traces in this zone. The Nubian and its various dialects were the spoken language in the Christian Kingdoms of Nubie.One finds other languages Nubian 400 km in the south, close to Darfur, and in the mountains of Nubie. In the past there was a debate trying to establish if the Nubian languages had extended since the Nile to Darfur or the reverse. It was always considered that their origin was Valley of the Nile, but certain studies lexico-statistics carried out towards the end of the XXe century (Thelwall 1982, Adams 1982) seems to attest opposite. Joseph Greenberg calculated that separation between the Nubians of the Nile and Darfur occurred towards -500 (city in Thelwall 1982). This estimate is coherent with the nonlinguistic studies, for example the history of the Charqiya oral tradition.
References
- Adams, W.Y. (1982) “The coming off Nubian announcers to the Nile Valley”, in Ehret, C. & Posnansky, Mr. (eds.) The Archeological and Linguistic Rebuilding off African History. Berkeley/Los Angeles, 11-38.
- Asmaa Mr. I. Ahmed, " Suggestions for Writing Modern Nubian Languages" , and Muhammad J.A. Hashim, " Competing Orthographies for Writing Nobiin Nubian" , in Occasional Papers in the Study off Sudanese Languages No 9 , SIL /Sudan, Entebbe 2004.
- Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne (1989) “Nile-Nubian Reconsidered”, in Mr. Lionel Bender (ED.), Topics in Nilo-Saharan Linguistics , Hamburg: Heinrich Buske.
- Bechhaus-Gerst, Marianne (1996) Sprachwandel durch Sprachkontakt amndt Beispiel of Nubischen im Niltal. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer diachronen Soziolinguistik. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
- Jakobi, Angelika & Tanja Kummerle (1993) The Nubian Languages. In Annotated Bibliography. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
- Thelwall, Robin (1982) “Linguistic Aspects off Greater Nubian History”, in Ehret, C. & Posnansky, Mr. (eds.) The Archeological and Linguistic Rebuilding off African History. Berkeley/Los Angeles, 39-56. online version
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