Dinka language
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This article is about the language, for the ethnic group see Dinka.
| Dinka | ||
|---|---|---|
| Thuɔŋjäŋ | ||
| Pronunciation | /t̪uɔŋ.ɟa̤ŋ/ | |
| Spoken in | southern Sudan and neighboring areas | |
| Region | Sudan | |
| Total speakers | 2-3 million | |
| Language family | Nilo-Saharan? | |
| Writing system | Latin alphabet | |
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | none | |
| Regulated by | none | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | din | |
| ISO 639-3 | variously: dip – Northeastern Dinka (Padang) diw – Northwestern Dinka (Ruweng) dib – South Central Dinka (Agar) dks – Southeastern Dinka (Bor) dik – Southwestern Dinka (Rek) |
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| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Dinka language, or Thuɔŋjäŋ as it is known in the language itself, is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by the Dinka, one of the major ethnic groups of Southern Sudan. 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. The dialect of the Rek of Tonj is considered the "standard" or prestige variety.
It is further classified as part of the Dinka-Nuer 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, the language of the Dinka's traditional rivals. Other major languages closely related within Western Nilotic are Shilluk, Luo/Dholuo and Acholi. (SIL Ethnologue, 2005 data)
"Nilotic" indicates that its speakers are found mainly along the Nile, specifically the west bank of the White Nile, a major tributary flowing northwards from Uganda. The Dinka live north and south of the marshy Sudd 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 ethnic distribution map.)
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[edit] Linguistic features
[edit] 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 | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | breathy | plain | breathy | |
| Close | i | i̤ | u | |
| Close-mid | e | e̤ | o | o̤ |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɛ̤ | ɔ | ɔ̤ |
| Open | a | a̤ | ||
There may be other distinctions. The Bor (southeastern) dialect is known to contrast modal voice, breathy voice, faucalized voice, and harsh voice 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, [a͈], and an underline for harsh voice, [a].[1] Examples are,
| Voice | modal | breathy | harsh | faucalized |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bor Dinka | tɕìt̪ | tɕì̤t̪ | tɕìt̪ | tɕì͈t̪ |
| diarrhea | go ahead | scorpions | to swallow |
There are twenty consonant phonemes:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | n | ɲ | ŋ |
| Plosive | p b | t̪ d̪ | t d | c ɟ | k g |
| Fricative | ɣ | ||||
| Rhotic | ɾ | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | w |
[edit] Morphology
This language practices vowel ablaut or apophony, the change of internal vowels (compare English goose/geese):
-
Singular Plural gloss vowel alternation dom dum 'field/fields' (o-u) kat kɛt 'frame/frames' (a-ɛ)
- (Bauer 2003:35)
[edit] Tones
Dinka is a tonal language.
[edit] 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) Twi
- Southwestern (Rek) (Dialects: Rek, Abiem, Aguok, Apuk, Awan, Kuac,Lau, Luac/Luanyang, Malual, Paliet, Palioupiny, Twic)
(See Ethnologue online map of Sudan for locations of dialects
[edit] Writing Dinka
Dinka is written with a Latin-based alphabet. There have been variants since the early 20th century, but the current alphabet is: a ä b c d dh e ë ɛ ɛ̈ g ɣ i ï k l m n nh ny ŋ o ö ɔ ɔ̈ p r t th u w y
[edit] References
- ^ Edmondson, Jerold A.; John H. Esling (2005). The valves of the throat and their functioning in tone, vocal register, and stress: laryngoscopic case studies.
[edit] External links
- OpenRoad page on Dinka
- Dinka Language Institute (Australia) (DLIA) multilingual site on Dinka, including in Dinka
- SIL page on Dinka "macrolanguage" (access to SIL & Ethnologue pages)
- PanAfrican L10n page on Dinka
- Dinka alphabet on Answer.com
[edit] 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)
[edit] See also
- Dinka people
- Nilo-Saharan languages
