Koalib (also called Kwalib, Abri, Lgalige, Nirere and Rere) is a Niger–Congo language in the Heiban family spoken in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan.[2] The Koalib Nuba, Turum and Umm Heitan ethnic groups speak this language.
| Koalib | |
|---|---|
| Kowalib | |
| Rere | |
| Native to | Sudan |
| Region | Nuba Hills |
| Ethnicity | Koalib, Turum, Umm Heitan |
Native speakers | 100,000 (2009)[1] |
Niger–Congo?
| |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | kib |
| Glottolog | koal1240 |
Dialects and locations
editKoalib dialects and locations (Ethnologue, 22nd edition):
- Nginyukwur dialect: Hadra, Nyukwur, and Umm Heitan
- Ngirere dialect: Abri area
- Ngunduna dialect: Koalib hills area
- Nguqwurang dialect: Turum and Umm Berumbita
Phonology
editConsonants
edit| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | ʈ | c | k | kʷ |
| voiced/imp. | b | d | ᶑ | ɟ | |||
| prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᶯɖ | ᶮɟ | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ | |
| Fricative | f | ʃ | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | |||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
- The voiced retroflex equivalent is an implosive sound [ᶑ] rather than a standard plosive [ɖ].
- Gemination occurs among plosive, nasal, liquid and approximant sounds.
- Sounds /f, t, ʃ, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic or pre-consonantal position can be heard as voiced [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ, ɡʷ]. In post-consonantal position, /f, t, ʃ, k/ are heard as [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ].
- In final position, sounds /ɟ, f/ are heard as [c, p].
- Sounds /p, t, ʈ, c, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic position can be heard as tense [pː, tː, ʈː, cː, kː, kːʷ].[3]
Vowels
edit| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɔ |
| Open | a |
Writing system
edit
It is written using the Latin script,[2] but includes some unusual letters. It shares a tailed R (Ɽ) with other Sudanese languages, and uses a letter resembling the at sign (@) for transcribing the letter ع in Arabic loanwords. The Unicode Standard includes R WITH TAIL at code points U+027D (lowercase) and U+2C64 (uppercase), but the Unicode Consortium in 2004 declined to encode the at sign separately as an orthographic letter due to lack of evidence of use.[4]
SIL International maintains a registry of Private Use Area code points in which U+F247 represents LATIN SMALL LETTER AT, and U+F248 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AT.[5] However, they have marked this PUA representation as deprecated since September 2014, and the current version of their corporate PUA character assignments package recommends using U+24D0 ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A and U+24B6 Ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A for that letter instead.[6]
Publications
editThe New Testament was published in Koalib in 1967.
Footnotes
edit- ^ Koalib at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ a b Ethnologue report Archived 2008-09-05 at the Wayback Machine for language code: kib, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
- ^ Quint, Nicolas; Kokko, S. Ali Karmal (2009). The phonology of Koalib: A Kordofanian language of the Nuba mountains (Sudan). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- ^ "Resolved Public Review Issues (Public Review Issue #40)". Unicode. 2004-11-08. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
- ^ Charis SIL Archived 2010-04-13 at the Wayback Machine font documentation, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
- ^ Constable, Peter, and Lorna A. Priest (January 17, 2019) SIL Corporate PUA Assignments 5.2a Archived 2010-02-23 at the Wayback Machine. SIL International Archived 2007-12-01 at the Wayback Machine. pp. 59-60. Retrieved on July 20, 2020.
External links
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