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Dinka (natively Thuɔŋjäŋ, Thuɔŋ ee Jieng or simply Jieng) is a Nilotic dialect cluster spoken by the Dinka people, the major ethnic group of South Sudan. There are several main varieties, Padang, Rek, Agaar, Bor, Hol, Twic East, Twic,[2][3] which are distinct enough (though mutually intelligible) to require separate literary standards. Jaang, Jieng or Monyjieng 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.

Dinka
Thuɔŋjäŋ
Pronunciation	[t̪uɔŋ.ɟa̤ŋ]
Native to	Sudan, South Sudan
Ethnicity	Dinka people
Native speakers	1.3 million (ca. 2008-2016; some figures undated)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Nilotic Western Nilotic Dinka–Nuer Dinka
Writing system	Latin (Dinka alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-2	din
ISO 639-3	din – inclusive code Individual codes: dip – Northeastern (Padang) diw – Northwestern (Ruweng) dib – South Central (Agar) dks – Southeastern: Bor, which also includes Nyarweng, Hol, Twi dik – Southwestern (Rek & Twic)
Glottolog	dink1262
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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.[4]

The Dinka are found mainly along the Nile, specifically the west bank of the White Nile, a major tributary flowing north from Uganda, north and south of the Sudd marsh in South Kordofan state of Sudan as well as Bahr el Ghazal region and Upper Nile state of South Sudan.

Linguistic features

Phonology

Consonants

There are 20 consonant phonemes:

	Labial		Dental		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal		m		n̪		n		ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b	t̪	d̪	t	d	c	ɟ	k	ɡ
Fricative										ɣ
Approximant (Lateral)								j		w
						l
Rhotic						ɾ

Vowels

Dinka has a rich vowel system, with thirteen phonemically contrastive short vowels. There are seven vowel qualities plus a two-way distinction in phonation. The underdots, [◌̤], mark the breathy voice series, represented in Dinka orthography by diaereses, ⟨◌̈⟩. Unmarked vowels are modal or creaky voiced.

	Front		Back
	plain	breathy	plain	breathy
Close	i	i̤	u
Close-mid	e	e̤	o	o̤
Open-mid	ɛ	ɛ̤	ɔ	ɔ̤
Open			a	a̤

Four phonetic phonations have been described in Dinka vowels: modal voice, breathy voice, faucalized voice, and harsh voice. The modal series has creaky or harsh voice realizations in certain environments, while the breathy vowels are centralized and have been described as being hollow voiced (faucalized). This is independent of tone.[5]

On top of this, there are three phonemically contrastive vowel lengths, a feature found in very few languages.[5] Most Dinka verb roots are single, closed syllables with either a short or a long vowel. Some inflections lengthen that vowel:

• /lèl/ 'isolate\2sg'
• /lèːl/ 'isolate\3sg'
• /léːl/ 'provoke\2sg'
• /lèːːl/ 'provoke\3sg'

short	ràaan ā-lèl	"You are isolating a person (ràaan)."
long	ràaan ā-lèel	"He is isolating a person."
overlong	lràaan ā-lèeel	"He is provoking a person."

Tone

The extensive use of tone and its interaction with morphology is a notable feature of all dialects of Dinka. The Bor dialects all have four tonemes at the syllable level: Low, High, Mid, and Fall.[5]

In Bor proper, falling tone is not found on short vowels except as an inflection for the passive in the present tense. In Nyaarweng and Twïc[6][7] it is not found at all. In Bor proper, and perhaps in other dialects as well, Fall is only realized as such at the end of a prosodic phrase. Elsewhere it becomes High.

In Bor proper and perhaps other dialects, a Low tone is only phonetically low after another low tone. Elsewhere it is falling, but not identical to Fall: It does not become High in the middle of a phrase, and speakers can distinguish the two falling tones despite the fact that they have the same range of pitch. The difference appears to be in the timing: with Fall one hears a high level tone that then falls, whereas the falling allophone of Low starts falling and then levels out. (That is, one falls on the first mora of the vowel, whereas the other falls on the second mora.) This is unusual because it has been theorized that such timing differences are never phonemic.[8]

Morphology

This language exhibits vowel ablaut or apophony, the change of internal vowels (similar to English goose/geese):[9]

Singular	Plural	gloss	vowel alternation
dom	dum	'field/fields'	(o–u)
kat	kɛt	'frame/frames'	(a–ɛ)

Dialects

Linguists divide Dinka into five languages or dialect clusters corresponding to their geographic location with respect to each other:[10]

Northeastern and western:

• Padang da Ayuel jiel (Abiliang, Nyiël, Ageer, Dongjol).
• Luäc da (Akook, Wieu, Aguer)
• Ngok de Jok (Upper Nile)
• Rut
• Thoi

Western:

• Ngók de Jok Athuorkok (Abiei)
• Ngok de Jok da Awet
• Kuel of Ruweeng (Panaru, Aloor and Paweny)

South Central:

• Aliap
• Ciëc (Jang)
• Gok
• Agar
• Apaak of Yirol west.

Southeastern:

• Bor
• Twic (Twi)
• Nyarweng
• Hol

Southwestern:

• Malual-Jiɛrnyaaŋ (Abiëm, Paliëët, Aroyo, Paliëupiny ku Pajok)
• Rek
• Aguɔɔk
• Apuk
• Awan Cän ku Awan Mɔ̈u
• Kuac
• Lɔu
• Luäc/Luänyjäŋ
• Twïc

These would be largely mutually intelligible if it were not for the importance of tone in grammatical inflection, as the grammatical function of tone differs from one variety to another.

See Ethnologue online map of Sudan for locations of dialects.

Writing system

Dinka has been written with several Latin alphabets since the early 20th century. The current alphabet is:

a ä b c d dh e ë ɛ ɛ̈ g ɣ i ï j k l m n nh ny ŋ t th u w o ö ɔ ɔ̈ p r y

Variants in other alphabets include:

Current letter	Alternatives
ɛ	ė ("e" with a dot on top)
ɣ	h, x, q
ŋ	ng
ɔ	ȯ ("o" with a dot on top)

See also

• Dinka people
• Nilo-Saharan languages

References

Other resources

External links

• kasahorow page on Dinka
• OpenRoad page on Dinka
• Dinka Language Institute (Australia) (DLIA) multilingual site on Dinka, including in Dinka
• PanAfrican L10n page on Dinka
• Dinka alphabet on Answer.com
• Kitap De Duɔr Prayer Book with Hymns, in Dinka, Bor dialect (1956) digitized by Richard Mammana in 2015
• din:Wikipedia:Apam këdït Wikipedia in Dinka

На других языках

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[de] Dinka (Sprache)

Dinka (Eigenbezeichnung Thuɔŋjäŋ) ist eine westnilotische Sprache, die vom Volk der Dinka im Südsudan gesprochen wird. 1982 gab es laut Bevölkerungszensus der Republik Sudan rund 1,35 Millionen Sprecher von Dinka-Dialekten, im Jahr 1997 wurde die Zahl auf 2,74 Millionen Sprecher geschätzt.

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- [en] Dinka language

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[fr] Dinka (langue)

Le dinka est une langue nuer-dinka du Soudan du Sud parlée par les Dinka.

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[ru] Динка (язык)

Язык динка (самоназвание Thuɔŋjäŋ) — язык народа динка, одной из крупнейших аборигенных этнических групп в Южном Судане. Количество носителей — ок. 2-3 млн. Делится на 5 крупных диалектных зон. Термин Jaang иногда обозначает всю совокупность диалектов динка, тогда как диалект Rek (Tonj) считается стандартным, наиболее престижным с точки зрения социального статуса.

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