Linguistic notes

Variation

The speech community of Nubi was widespread over East Africa, but in recent years, the speakers are only found in Kenya and Uganda.

Because of this history, there are significant variations. However, there is not something like "Kibera dialect" or "Arua dialect", or even "Kenyan dialect" or "Ugandan dialect" in a systematic manner, due to heavy intermigrations and kinship ties among the community.

In this dictionary, a few labels are given to show peculiar dialectal forms (such as Bg. for a Buganda variation), but note that it is not really decisive. The label var. signifies it is an (orthographic) free variation used by various local communities.

Due to language contacts with local African languages, Nubi has many loanwords. Their etymologies are shown with the label etym. plus a language name (Sw. is used for Swahili). Synonyms are shown with the label syn.

Word classes

In this dictionary, Nubi words are categorized into the following word classes (pronoun, noun, adjective, verb, preposition, adverb, conjunction, particle, interjection). See the bottom of this page for the list of abbreviations.

Pronoun (pron.)

Personal pronoun

  • Nubi has four types of personal pronouns, independent, subject, possessive, and dative. Independent pronouns are used as a subject (argument before a predicate) and object (argument after a transitive verb or a preposition) without changing the form. Subject pronouns are truncated forms of independent pronouns always occur pre-verbally. Possessive pronouns modify nouns and dative pronouns modify verbs.

  • Independent pronoun: 1SG ána, 2SG íta, 3SG úwo, 1PL ína, 2PL ítakum, 3PL úmon. E.g. Úwo dúgu ána. He hit me. Ána dúgu úwo. I hit him.

  • Subject pronoun: 1SG án-, 2SG tá-, 3SG ó-, 1PL ná-, 2PL tákum-, 3PL món-. E.g. án-dúgu úwo. I hit him. Món-gí-sô sunú? What are they doing?

  • Possessive pronoun: 1SG taí, 2SG táki, 3SG tô, 1PL téna/těna, 2PL tákum, 3PL tómon. E.g. bê taí. my house. míla těna. our culture.

  • Dative pronoun: 1SG naí/na-ána, 2SG něki/ne-íta, 3SG nowo/no-úwo, 1PL ne-ína, 2PL ne-ítakum, 3PL no-úmon. E.g. jíbu naí 'bring me'

  • In addition, the 1SG person has a special dative form -ní, suffixed to a few verbs whose high tone and final vowel is deleted . E.g. jíbu 'bring' > jib-ní 'bring me', wedí 'give' > wed-ní 'give me', gáta 'cut' > gat-ní 'cut for me'.

Demonstrative

  • There are four demonstratives (with variations) dé 'this, it", wédé 'this', dôldé/dôlé 'these', nâdé/dâdé 'that, those'. Each stands as a pronoun and a determiner.

Question word (interrogative pronouns, adjectives, )

  • Main question words are shunú/sunú 'what', munú 'who, whom', yatú 'which', kefín 'how', malú 'why', mitên 'when', wên 'where', f(ú)wên/wenú 'where is'.

Noun (n.)

Number

  • Nubi has two grammatical numbers, singular (sg.) and plural (pl.).

Compound noun


Adjective (adj.)

Number

Comparison

Determiner (det.) kíla 'every, each'

Numeral (num.)

Verb (v.)

tense-aspect-modality and auxiliary verb (aux.)

copula

existential

possessive

intransitive

transitive

passive

verbal noun

weather expression

Preposition (prep.)

simple preposition

compound preposition

Adverb (adv.)

simple adverb

ideophone

sentential adverb

Conjunction (conj.)

relative clause marker

adverbial clause marker




Particle (ptcl.)

Focus particle yǎ


Sentence-final particle ke


Interjection (intj.)


  • Since all Nubis are Muslims, pan-Islamic Qur'anic expressions are frequently used. E.g. assalâm aláikum/waaláikumus salâm 'peace be upon you', alhámdu lillâ 'praise be to Allah'.

List of abbreviation

  • adj. adjective

  • adv. adverb

  • aux. auxiliary verb

  • Bg. Buganda variety

  • conj. conjunction

  • det. determiner

  • intj. interjection

  • n. noun

  • num. numeral

  • pl. plural

  • prep. preposition

  • ptcl. particle

  • sg. singular

  • syn. synonym

  • v. verb

  • v.i. intransitive verb

  • v.t. transitive verb

  • var. free variation