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Nilotic Languages
The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples. Etymology The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile river, Nile River or to the Nile region of Africa. Demographics Nilotic peoples, who are the native speakers of the languages, originally migrated from the Gezira (state), Gezira area in Sudan. Nilotic language speakers live in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Subdivisions According to linguist Joseph Greenberg, the language family is divided up into three subgroups: *Eastern Nilotic languages such as Turkana language, Turkana and Maasai language, Maasai *Southern Nilotic languages such as Kalenjin languages, Kalenjin and Datooga language, Datooga *Western Nilotic languages such as Luo languages, Luo, Nuer languages, Nuer and Dinka language, Dinka Before Joseph Greenberg, Greenberg's reclassification, Nil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nilotic Peoples
The Nilotic peoples are peoples indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uganda, the north eastern border area of Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania. The Nilotic peoples consist of the Dinka, the Nuer, the Shilluk, the Luo peoples, the Alur, the Anuak, the Ateker peoples, the Kalenjin people and the Karamojong people also known as the Karamojong or Karimojong,, Ngasa people, Datooga, Samburu, and the Maa-speaking peoples. The Nilotes constitute the majority of the population in South Sudan while constituting a substantial minority in the countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. They make up a notable part of the population of North eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well. Nilotic people are believed to number 50 million in the 21st century. Physically, Nilotes are noted for their typically very dark skin color an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turkana Language
Turkana Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh is the language of the Turkana people of Kenya and Ethiopia. It is spoken in northwestern Kenya, primarily in Turkana County, which lies west of Lake Turkana. It is one of the Eastern Nilotic languages, and is closely related to Karamojong, Jie and Teso of Uganda, to Toposa spoken in the extreme southeast of South Sudan, and to Nyangatom in the South Sudan/Ethiopia Omo valley borderland; these languages together form the cluster of Ateker Languages. The collective group name for these related peoples is Ateker. Phonology Consonants * can also occur as affricated when in syllable-initial positions. * Affricate sounds can also be heard as palatal stops . * Voiced stops may also occur glottalized as implosives when in syllable-initial positions. In syllable-final position, they are realized as unreleased. * is realized as a uvular stop when occurring in between vowels . When it is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alveolar Consonant
Alveolar consonants (; UK also ) are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue (the apical consonants), as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip (the "blade" of the tongue; called laminal consonants), as in French and Spanish. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) does not have separate symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the same symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar ''sh'', or retroflex. To disambiguate, the ''bridge'' (, ''etc.'') may be used for a dental consonant, or the under-bar (, ''etc.'') may be used for the postalveolars. differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized. The bare letter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dental Consonant
A dental consonant is a consonant articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth, such as , . In some languages, dentals are distinguished from other groups, such as alveolar consonants, in which the tongue contacts the gum ridge. Dental consonants share acoustic similarity and in the Latin script are generally written with consistent symbols (e.g. ''t'', ''d'', ''n''). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic for dental consonant is . When there is no room under the letter, it may be placed above, using the character , such as in / p͆/. Cross-linguistically Languages, such as Albanian, Irish and Russian, velarization is generally associated with more dental articulations of coronal consonants. Thus, velarized consonants, such as Albanian , tend to be dental or denti-alveolar, and non-velarized consonants tend to be retracted to an alveolar position. Sanskrit, Hindustani and all other Indo-Aryan languages have an entire set of dental stops that occu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labial Consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the upper lip against the lower teeth (the reverse of labiodental), normally only found in pathological speech. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes, they behave as labial consonants. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the nasal and the stops, , , and , are bilabial and the fricatives, , and , are labiodental. The voiceless bilabial fricative, voiced bilabial fricative, and the bilabial approximant do not exist as the primary realizations of any sounds in E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Starostin
Georgiy Sergeevich "George" Starostin (; born 4 July 1976) is a Russian linguist. He is the son of the late historical linguist Sergei Starostin (1953–2005), and his work largely continues his father's. He is also known as a self-published music reviewer, author of the ''Only Solitaire Blog''. Research Starostin focuses almost exclusively on maintaining the following of his father's projects: the Evolution of Human Languages project; The Tower of Babel, a publicly searchable online database containing information about many Eurasia's language families; and STARLING, a software package to aid comparative linguists.FAQs of The Tower of Babel project at Starling.rinet.ru Evolution of Human Languages The |
Roger Blench
Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and works as a consultant. Career Blench is known for his wide-ranging interests and has made important contributions to African linguistics, Southeast Asian linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology, ethnobotany, and various other related fields. He has done significant research on the Niger–Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afroasiatic families, as well as the Arunachal languages. Additionally, Blench has published extensively on the relationship between linguistics and archaeology. Blench is currently engaged in a long-term project to document the languages of central Nigeria. He has also expressed concern about ranching in Nigeria. Blench collaborated with the late Professor Kay Williamson, who died in January 2005, and is now a trustee of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nilo-Hamitic Languages
Paranilotic is a group of languages proposed by Carl Meinhof. Karl Lepsius had established the Nilotic languages as a family, with Western, Eastern, and Southern branches. Meinhof proposed that only Western were truly Nilotic, and that Eastern and Southern, which he called Nilo-Hamitic, were a mixture of (Western) Nilotic and Hamitic languages (in particular, modern Cushitic), based on racial and other non-linguistic considerations. Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ... reverted to Lepsius's classification, as part of an attempt to remove racial classifications from African linguistics. However, Tucker and Bryan's (1956, 1966) influential surveys resurrected Meinhof's proposal under the name ''Paranilotic'', and that name is still sometimes found, espe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinka Language
Dinka (natively , or simply ) is a Nilotic dialect cluster spoken by the Dinka people, a major ethnic group of South Sudan. There are several main varieties, such as Padang, Rek, Agaar, Ciec, Malual, Apaak, Aliab, Bor, Hol, Nyarweng, Twic East and Twic Mayardit, which are distinct enough (though mutually intelligible) to require separate literary standards. Jaang, Jieng or Muonyjieng is used as a general term to cover all Dinka languages. Recently ''Akutmɛ̈t Latueŋ Thuɔŋjäŋ'' (the Dinka Language Development Association) has proposed a unified written grammar of Dinka. The language most closely related to Dinka is the Nuer language. The Luo languages are also closely related. The Dinka vocabulary shows considerable proximity to Nubian, which is probably due to medieval interactions between the Dinka people and the kingdom of Alodia. The Dinka are found mainly along the Nile, specifically the west bank of the White Nile, a major tributary flowing north from Uganda, no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuer Languages
The Nuer language (''Thok Naath'', "people's language") is a Nilotic languages, Nilotic language of the Western Nilotic languages, Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer people, Nuer people of South Sudan and in western Ethiopia (region of Gambela Region, Gambela). The language is very similar to Dinka language, Dinka and Atuot language, Atuot. The language is written with a Latin alphabet, Latin-based alphabet. There are several dialects of Nuer, although all share one written standard. For example, final , is pronounced in the Jikany Nuer, Jikany dialect but is dropped in other dialects despite being indicated in the Nuer orthography used by all. Phonology A phonological analysis has yet to be done. The following consonants may therefore not all be distinct. Voicing is not distinctive at the end of a stem, regardless of whether it's at the end of a word or utterance. Consonant clusters due to suffixes tend to be simplified. Dental consonants are written ''th dh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luo Languages
The dozen Luo, Lwo or Lwoian languages are spoken by the Luo peoples in an area ranging from southern Sudan to western Ethiopia to southern Kenya, with Dholuo extending into northern Tanzania and Alur into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They form one of the two branches of the Western Nilotic family, the other being the Dinka– Nuer. The Southern Luo varieties are mutually intelligible, and apart from ethnic identity they might be considered a single language. Classification The time depth of the division of the Luo languages is moderate, perhaps close to two millennia. The division within the Southern Luo language dialect cluster is considerably shallower, perhaps five to eight centuries, reflecting migrations due to the impact of the Islamization of the Sudan region. The Luo languages are classified within the Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is an open-access online bibliographic database of the world's languages. In addition to listing linguistic materials ( gramma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
