Dilling (also Delen, Warkimbe; autonym: Warki) is a Hill Nubian language spoken in the northwestern Nuba Mountains in the south of Sudan. It is spoken by around 12,000 people in the town of Dilling and surrounding hills, including Kudur. Ethnologue reports that Dilling is moribund, with only older adults speaking the language and not using it with their children. All speakers also use Sudanese Arabic. The Dilling call themselves Warki, while the Dilling speakers of Kudur call themselves Kwashe. Another ethnic minority that speak Dilling are the Debri people, an ethnic group of several thousand people from South Kordofan in Sudan.
Dialects Dilling has one dialect – Debri, which is spoken on the mountain Gebel Debri, south of Ghulfan.
Phonology Consonants Dilling has 21 consonants:
+Consonant phonemes Bilabial Labio-dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal Plosive Fricative () Nasal Approximant Lateral approximant
Vowels Kauczor's 1920 orthography for Dilling lists nine vowels: a, e, ẹ, e̬, i, o, ọ, o̬, and u. The vowels a, e, i, o, and u correspond to their modern IPA definitions. ẹ and e̬ are described by Kauczor as falling between and ; likewise, ọ and o̬ fall between and . These may correspond to the modern lax vowels; Kauczor notes that these four vowels are highly variable and affected by their phonological context.
+Monophthong phonemes Front CentralBack unrounded unrounded rounded Close Near-close Close-mid Open-mid Open
Nouns In Dilling there is no difference grammatical gender in nouns verb forms, pronouns and relative terms, to express a gender in a person one adds expression to clarify such as for example (man) or (woman). These are added apposition without a connector. With animals the name classifies gender and species, 'tẹ' "female cow" and 'tere' "bull".
Dilling does not have specific and non specific articles but it uses personal pronouns of the 3rd person singular or plural and is placed in front of the noun '' "the (mentioned) man". Exceptions are names and if the noun has an attribute afterwards it is either placed in front, between the noun and attribute or it is multiplied.
Pronouns The personal pronouns are:
Person Singular Plural 1st 2nd 3rd /
Often times one only puts first person pronouns in front of the verb and leaves it out when referring to the 3rd person sg/pl or if they wanted to use it as a noun when they want to stress this part, they would put it in front of the verb.
Numbers Numbers 1 to 29 are written in Dilling starting from 30 numbers are either accumulating the numbers or taken from Arabic especially starting from 100.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
References