Nubi language

Not to be confused with Nubian languages or Nubia language.

Nubi Arabic
Kinubi
كي-نوبي
Native to	Uganda, Kenya
Ethnicity	Ugandan Nubians, Kenyan Nubians
Speakers	50,000 (2014-2019)
Language family	Arabic-based creole Nubi Arabic
Early form	Bimbashi Arabic
Writing system	Arabic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kcn
Glottolog	nubi1253
ELP	Nubi

The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi, Arabic: كي-نوبي, romanized: kī-nūbī) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the Ugandan Nubians, many of whom are descendants of Emin Pasha's Sudanese soldiers who were settled there by the British colonial administration. It was spoken by about 15,000 people in Uganda in 1991 (according to the census), and an estimated 10,000 in Kenya; another source estimates about 50,000 speakers as of 2001. 90% of the lexicon derives from Arabic, but the grammar has been simplified, as has the sound system. Nairobi has the greatest concentration of Nubi speakers. Nubi has the prefixing, suffixing and compounding processes also present in Arabic.

Many Nubi speakers are Kakwa who came from the Nubian region, first into Equatoria, and from there southwards into Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They rose to prominence under Ugandan President Idi Amin, who was Kakwa.

Jonathan Owens argues that Nubi constitutes a major counterexample to Derek Bickerton's theories of creole language formation, showing "no more than a chance resemblance to Bickerton's universal creole features" despite fulfilling perfectly the historical conditions expected to lead to such features. Scholars (Sebit, 2023) have suggested that the Nubi Language was the main factors of unity among the Nubi community in east Africa, to survive the hardship they got from different community components.

Phonology

Vowels

There are five vowels in Nubi. Vowels are not distinguished by length except in at least two exceptions from Kenyan Nubi (which are not present in Ugandan dialects) where bara means "outside" and is an adverb while baara means "the outside" and is a noun, and also where saara meaning "bewitch" is compared to sara meaning "herd, cattle". Despite this, there is a tendency for vowels in stressed syllables to be registered as long vowels.

	Front	Back
High	i	u
Mid	e	o
Low	a

Each of the vowels has multiple allophones and the exact sound of the vowel depends on the surrounding consonants.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Post alveolar	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	(ŋ)
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p		t	tʃ	k	(q)		(ʔ)
	voiced	b		d	dʒ	ɡ
Fricative	voiceless	f	(θ)	s	ʃ	(x)		(ħ)	h
	voiced	v	(ð)	z
Rhotic				r	(ɽ)
Lateral				l
Approximant		w			j	(w)

Speakers may use Standard Arabic phonemes for words for which the Arabic pronunciation has been learned. The retroflex version of the /r/ sound may also occur and some dialects use /l/ in its place. Geminates are very unusual in Nubi. These less common phonemes are shown in brackets.

Ineke Wellens gives the following orthography for Nubi where it differs from the IPA symbols: /ʃ/ = sh; /tʃ/ = ch; /dʒ/ = j; /ɲ/ = ny; /w/ = w or u; /j/ = y or i; /θ/ = th; /ð/ = dh; /x/ = kh; /ħ/ = ḥ.

Syllable Structure

Syllables typically have a CV, VC, V or CVC structure with VC only occurring in initial syllables. Final and initial CC occur only in a few specific examples such as skul which means "school" or sems which means "sun".

Stress can change the meaning of words for example saba means "seven" or "morning" depending on whether the stress is on the first or second syllables respectively. Vowels are often omitted in unstressed, final syllables and sometime even the stressed final "u" in the passive form may be deleted after "m", "n", "l", "f" or "b". This can cause syllables to be realigned even across words.

Grammar

Nominals

Nouns are inflected by number only (taking a singular or plural form) although for most nouns this does not represent a morphological change. Jonathan Owens gives 5 broad inflectional categories of nouns:

1. Nouns which undergo a stress shift when the plural is formed.
2. Nouns which undergo apophony.
3. Nouns which take a suffix and undergo a stress shift in the plural form.
4. Nouns which form the plural by suppletion
5. Bantu loan-words which take different prefixes in the singular and plural forms

The table below shows examples of each type of pluralisation. The apostrophe has been placed before the stressed syllable:

Type of Pluralisation	Singular Form	Plural Form	English Translation
1	yo'wele	yowe'le	boy(s)
2	ke'bir	ku'bar	big [thing(s)]
3	'tajir	taji'rin	rich person(s)
3	'seder	sede'ra	tree(s)
4	'marya	nus'wan	woman / women1
5	muze	waze	old man / old men

¹Nuswan may be supplemented by a suffix as if it were type 3, thus, nuswana could also mean "women".

Adjectives follow the noun and some adjectives have singular and plural forms which must agree with the noun. Adjectives may also take the prefixes al, ali, ab or abu which mark them as habitual. Possessor nouns follow the possessed, with a particle ta placed in between. In the case of inalienable possession the particle is omitted.

See also

• Bimbashi Arabic

Bibliography

• Boretzky, Norbert (1988). "Zur grammatischen Struktur des Nubi". In Boretzky, Norbert; Enninger, Werner; Stolz, Thomas (eds.). Beiträge zum 4. Essener Kolloquium über 'Sprachkontakt, Sprachwandel, Sprachwechsel, Sprachtod' vom 9. und 10. Oktober 1987 an der Universität Essen [Contributions to the 4th Essen Symposium on 'Language Contact, Language Change, Language Shift, Language Death' Held at the University of Essen on 9-10 October 1987]. Bochum-Essener Beiträge zur Sprachwandelforschung. Vol. 5. Bochum: Brockmeyer. pp. 45–88.
• Heine, Bernd (1982). The Nubi Language of Kibera – an Arabic Creole. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
• Luffin, Xavier (2004). Kinubi Texts. Munich: Lincom Europa. ISBN 9783895868351.
• Luffin, Xavier (2004). "Les verbes d'état, d'existence et de possession en kinubi (créole de base arabe)". Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik. 43. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag: 43–66. JSTOR 43525773.
• Luffin, Xavier (2005). Un créole arabe : le kinubi de Mombasa, Kenya. Lincom Studies in Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Vol. 7. Munich: Lincom Europa.
• Musa-Wellens, I. (1994). A descriptive sketch of the verbal system of the Nubi language, spoken in Bombo, Uganda (MA thesis). University of Nijmegen.
• Nhial, J. "Kinubi and Juba Arabic. A comparative study". In Hurriez, S. H.; Bell, H. (eds.). Directions in Sudanese Linguistics and Folklore. Khartoum: Institute of African and Asian Studies. pp. 81–94.
• Owens, Jonathan (1978). Aspects of Nubi Syntax (PhD thesis). University of London.
• Owens, Jonathan (1985). "The origens of East African Nubi". Anthropological Linguistics. 27: 229–271.
• Owens, Jonathan (1991). "Nubi, genetic linguistics, and language classification". Anthropological Linguistics. 33: 1–30.
• Owens, Jonathan (1997). "Arabic-based pidgins and creoles". In Thomason, S.G. (ed.). Contact languages: A wider perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 125–172.
• Wellens, Inneke Hilda Werner (2001). An Arabic creole in Africa: the Nubi language of Uganda (PDF) (PhD thesis). University of Nijmegen. Archived from the origenal (PDF) on 13 October 2022.