Midob (also spelt Meidob) is the language of the
Midob people of
North Darfur
North Darfur State ( ar, ولاية شمال دارفور Wilāyat Šamāl Dārfūr; ''Shamal Darfor'') is one of the wilayat or states of Sudan. It is one of the five states composing the Darfur region. It has an area of 296,420 km2 and a ...
,
Sudan. It is one of the
Nubian languages, which are part of the
Nilo-Saharan language phylum.
Apart from in their homeland of Malha, North Darfur, Midob speakers also live in the
Khartoum area (primarily in
Omdurman and the
Gezira region) and Jezirat Aba.
[Rilly, Claude. 2010. ''Le méroïtique et sa famille linguistique''. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. ] The Midob people call their language ''tìd-n-áal'', literally "mouth of the Midob", and themselves ''tìddí'' (singular), ''tìd'' (plural). There are an estimated 50,000 Midob speakers in two main dialects, Urrti and Kaageddi. Rilly (2010:162) lists the dialects of Urrti, Shalkota, and Torti. Only Urrti has been described in detail.
Recent research on Midob has been done by Thelwall (1983) and Werner (1993). Both studies concerned the Urrti dialect.
Phonology
The following tables show the phonological consonants and vowels without phonetic variations and without more recent
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
loans.
Vowels
Note: All vowels occur long and short. The
mid central vowel
The mid central vowel (also known as schwa) is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase letter e.
While the ''Handbook of the I ...
''ə'' only appears in Midob, not in other Nubian languages.
Consonants
Tone
Midob is a
tonal language with two registers: High and Low. Tone is both lexical and grammatical.
Grammar
Midob is an
agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to rem ...
, like the other Nubian languages. The default word order is
SOV.
Verb
The verbs consist of:
:verbal stem ( + extension ) + tense/aspect.
The stem is not altered. Extensions modify or add meaning to the verb like
negation, intention,
affirmation, completed action,
plurality of subject–object or action,
durative The delimitative aspect is a grammatical aspect that indicates that a situation lasts only a certain amount of time.Stephen Dickey. 2007. "A prototype account of the development of delimitative ''po-'' in Russian". In Dagmar Divjak and Agata Kochań ...
,
habitual and sometimes can be combined (especially negation).
Tense and aspect
Midob has two basic tenses (Perfect and Continuous) plus Intentional. There are sets of suffixes for
indicative,
subjunctive and two question forms (to ask for a fact, i.e. "When/Why..." and to verify a fact, i.e. "Did you...").
Sets of personal endings:
References
*Werner, Roland (1993) 'Tìdn-áal: A Study of Midob (Darfur-Nubian)' Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
*Thelwall, Robin (1983) 'Meidob Nubian: Phonology, Grammatical Notes and Basic Vocabulary' in Bender, M. L. (Ed), ''Nilo-Saharan Language Studies'', V.13, East Lansing
External links
Midobfrom mille langues blog
Midob Materialfrom the Research of Roland Werner
{{Eastern Sudanic languages
Nubian languages
Languages of Sudan