Koalib language

Koalib (also called Kwalib, Abri, Lgalige, Nirere and Rere) is a Niger–Congo language in the Heiban family spoken in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan.[2] The Koalib Nuba, Turum and Umm Heitan ethnic groups speak this language.

Koalib
Kowalib
Rere
Native toSudan
RegionNuba Hills
EthnicityKoalib, Turum, Umm Heitan
Native speakers
100,000 (2009)[1]
Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3kib
Glottologkoal1240

Dialects and locations

Koalib dialects and locations (Ethnologue, 22nd edition):

  • Nginyukwur dialect: Hadra, Nyukwur, and Umm Heitan
  • Ngirere dialect: Abri area
  • Ngunduna dialect: Koalib hills area
  • Nguqwurang dialect: Turum and Umm Berumbita

Phonology

Consonants
Labial Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
plain lab.
Plosive voiceless p t ʈ c k kʷ
voiced/imp. b d ᶑ ɟ
prenasal ᵐb ⁿd ᶯɖ ᶮɟ ᵑɡ ᵑɡʷ
Fricative f ʃ
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ ŋʷ
Rhotic r ɽ
Approximant l j w
  • The voiced retroflex equivalent is an implosive sound [ᶑ] rather than a standard plosive [ɖ].
  • Gemination occurs among plosive, nasal, liquid and approximant sounds.
  • Sounds /f, t, ʃ, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic or pre-consonantal position can be heard as voiced [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ, ɡʷ]. In post-consonantal position, /f, t, ʃ, k/ are heard as [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ].
  • In final position, sounds /ɟ, f/ are heard as [c, p].
  • Sounds /p, t, ʈ, c, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic position can be heard as tense [pː, tː, ʈː, cː, kː, kːʷ].[3]

Vowels
Front Central Back
Close i u
Close-mid e o
Open-mid ɛ ɐ ɔ
Open a

Writing system
Capital and small at letters in Doulos SIL typeface

It is written using the Latin script,[2] but includes some unusual letters. It shares a tailed R (Ɽ) with other Sudanese languages, and uses a letter resembling the at sign (@) for transcribing the letter ع in Arabic loanwords. The Unicode Standard includes R WITH TAIL at code points U+027D (lowercase) and U+2C64 (uppercase), but the Unicode Consortium in 2004 declined to encode the at sign separately as an orthographic letter due to lack of evidence of use.[4]

SIL International maintains a registry of Private Use Area code points in which U+F247 represents LATIN SMALL LETTER AT, and U+F248 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AT.[5] However, they have marked this PUA representation as deprecated since September 2014, and the current version of their corporate PUA character assignments package recommends using U+24D0 ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A and U+24B6 Ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A for that letter instead.[6]

Publications

The New Testament was published in Koalib in 1967.

Footnotes
  1. Koalib at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) closed access
  2. Ethnologue report Archived 2008-09-05 at the Wayback Machine for language code: kib, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
  3. Quint, Nicolas; Kokko, S. Ali Karmal (2009). The phonology of Koalib: A Kordofanian language of the Nuba mountains (Sudan). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
  4. "Resolved Public Review Issues (Public Review Issue #40)". Unicode. 2004-11-08. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
  5. Charis SIL Archived 2010-04-13 at the Wayback Machine font documentation, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
  6. Constable, Peter, and Lorna A. Priest (January 17, 2019) SIL Corporate PUA Assignments 5.2a Archived 2010-02-23 at the Wayback Machine. SIL International Archived 2007-12-01 at the Wayback Machine. pp. 59-60. Retrieved on July 20, 2020.


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