LW/T 21: Kinubi Texts

 

Xavier Luffin
Université Libre de Bruxelles

The Kinubi is an Arabic-based Creole, spoken today in some parts of East Africa: Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo. Formerly, it was spoken in Tanzania and in Somalia.

This language is closely related to Juba Arabic, spoken in Southern Sudan. It is the language of a Muslim community – the Nubi. Their ancestors were soldiers who left Southern Sudan in the late 19th century, due to the Mahdist rebellion. They went to Uganda, where they enrolled in the British colonial army.

The target language of Kinubi is mainly Sudanese Arabic (actually, various Sudanese dialects). Many features distinguish Kinubi from Dialectal Arabic: phonemic changes, the loss of gender, the loss of the article al-, the loss of the Arabic verbal morphology and the use of TMA markers. This language is also highly influenced by English and Swahili.

The texts which are presented in this book have been collected in Bombo (Uganda), Kibera (Nairobi, Kenya) and Mombasa (Kenya). They deal with the history of the Nubi community: their origins in Sudan, their arrival in Uganda, their settling in other countries of East Africa, their participation in the First and Second World Wars. They also cover the post-Independance period.

Languages of the World/Text Collections 21. 172pp. 2005.

ISBN 9783895868351 (print)