Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Nubian languages are a group of related languages spoken by the Nubians. Nubian languages were spoken throughout much of Sudan, but as a result of Arabization they are today mostly limited to the Nile Valley between Aswan (southern Egypt) and Al Dabbah. In the 1956 Census of Sudan there were 167,831 speakers of Nubian languages. [2]
The term Nuba should not be confused with the Nubians, an unrelated ethnic group speaking the Nubian languages living in northern Sudan and southern Egypt, [6] although the Hill Nubians, who live in the Nuba Mountains, are also considered part of the Nubian people. [7]
Nubian languages. Hill Nubian; Notes: Eastern Sudanic is a large division of Nilo-Saharan spoken throughout the upper Nile region. Kir–Abbaian and Astaboran are the two branches of Eastern Sudanic, roughly distributed in the north and south of the region, respectively. The Nubian languages are spoken mostly in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
The Nile-Nubian languages were the languages of the Christian Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia. The other Nubian languages are found hundreds of kilometers to the southwest, in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains of Kordofan. For a long time it was assumed that the Nubian peoples dispersed from the Nile Valley to the south, probably ...
Old Nubian is one of the oldest written African languages and appears to have been adopted from the 10th–11th century as the main language for the civil and religious administration of Makuria. Besides Old Nubian, Koine Greek was widely used, especially in religious contexts, while Coptic mainly predominates in funerary inscriptions. [ 2 ]
Additionally, one extinct language known only from a word list of 36 words, Haraza, is unclassified within Hill Nubian. List of Kordofan Nubian (Hill Nubian) language varieties according to Rilly (2010:164-165): [6]
From an analysis of the lexicon of the Nubian languages, Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst proposes that when Nubian speakers first reached the Nile Valley ca 1500 BC, they encountered Cushitic-speaking peoples from whom they borrowed a large number of words, mainly connected with livestock production.
It is not clear if linguists are in support of this, as the linguistic relationship of Nubian languages with the Meroitic language is still debated. Nevertheless, historians like Brown (The History of Sudanese Tribes) mention that Midob was the ruling family in the Nubian Civilization and their roots extended to the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. [2]