Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

1. Introduction ⇫ ¶

Kinubi (autoglossonyms: Kinúbi or Rután núbi) is spoken today mainly in Uganda and in Kenya. It is spoken as a first language by the Nubi. According to some sources, it is also spoken as a lingua franca by non-Nubi in some towns of western Uganda. Most of the Nubi also speak Swahili and English. Formerly, there were some Nubi communities in Tanzania and Somalia too, but it seems that the Tanzanian Nubi do not speak the language anymore — it has been replaced by Swahili; the Nubi of Somalia accompanied the British when they left a part of Somalia to the Italians in 1921, and they then settled in Kenya. Some Nubi communities also live in the Democratic Republic of Congo, mainly in the cities close to the Ugandan border.

Kinubi is closely related to Juba Arabic (see Manfredi & Petrollino (2012) in this volume), but it also includes many words borrowed from Swahili and English. There are two main varieties of Kinubi, Ugandan Kinubi and Kenyan Kinubi, though they are very similar to each other.

2. Sociohistorical background ⇫ ¶

The establishment of Egyptian trading and military camps in southern Sudan, in the second half of the 19th century, led to the use of an Arabic-based lingua franca as the means of communication between Arabic speakers (using several dialects, such as Egyptian and West Sudanese) and the multilingual local population, especially the local men who were introduced into the army. Slowly, this lingua franca became a pidgin in use among the soldiers and their families. At the end of the 19th century, some of these soldiers went to East Africa — Uganda, and later Kenya, Tanzania, and even Somalia — where they settled down, mainly serving in the British colonial troops (the King’s African Rifles). With them they brought their language, which would later be called Kinubi. Most Nubi still remember the names of their ancestors’ “tribes” (kabíla in Kinubi) like Moru, Podjulu, Kakwa, Bari, Dinka, and Shilluk.

These pidginized and creolized varieties of Arabic have been described by European observers since the beginning of the 20th century. A British officer, E. V. Jenkins, wrote a booklet in 1908–1909 about the pidginized Arabic spoken by Sudanese soldiers serving in Uganda (Kaye & Tosco 1993). In 1913, J. A. Meldon, another British officer, also wrote a lexicon of this language (Meldon 1913).

3. Sociolinguistic situation ⇫ ¶

In East Africa, the Nubi communities are proud of their language and see it as one of the features of their identity. However, competition with English and Swahili may endanger the use of Kinubi, especially in the big cities like Mombasa or Nairobi, as it did in Tanzania, where it seems that Swahili has replaced Kinubi among the Nubi communities.

Kinubi may be written in Latin characters: Some Nubi exchange letters and e-mails in their language or use it in the written administration of their cultural organizations, as in Mombasa, for instance. In Bombo (Uganda), Mustafer Khamisy writes poems in Kinubi and distributes them during Nubi cultural events.

4. Phonology ⇫ ¶

The five vowels of Kinubi are shown in Table 1. Vowel length is not distinctive.

The consonants of Kinubi are shown in Table 2.

The consonants in parentheses in the chart have a marginal status and only occur in Arabic and Swahili loanwords.

There is phonemic variation for some consonants, mainly s ~ š, j ~ g, l ~ r, and z ~ j, as in: azól ~ ajól ‘man’, súnu ~ šúnu ‘what?’.

There is word stress, which may be lexically distinctive as in sába ‘seven’ vs. sabá ‘morning’, and even grammatically distinctive as in límu ‘to gather’ vs. limú ‘to be gathered’. In most cases, word stress in Kinubi corresponds to a long vowel or a stressed vowel in the lexifier, e.g. kalám ‘word’, azól ‘man’.

The main patterns of the syllable are: V, VC, CV, and CVC, as in á-na ‘I’, al (relative pronoun), fi ‘in’ and kan ‘if’, but there is a strong tendency toward open syllabic structure, for instance with the use of an additional final vowel, as in kebír > kebíri ‘big’.

5. Noun phrase ⇫ ¶

Kinubi distinguishes between independent pronouns and possessive suffix pronouns (following the possessive marker t-), though the pronouns of the 3rd person singular and the plural are similar:

The independent pronouns are used in four cases:

(i) subject of nominal sentences: úmun Mundáre [3PL Mundare] ‘They are Mundare.’

(ii) subject of verbal sentences: ína árifu má [1PL know NEG] ‘We didn’t know.’

(iii) objects of verbs: úwo šítim íta [3SG insult 2SG] ‘He has insulted you.’

(iv) after a preposition, as in (1).

The suffix pronouns are used after the possessive marker, as in ásma tá-i [name poss-1sg] ‘my name’ or wazé t-ómun [ancestor poss-3pl] ‘their ancestors’.

There is no morphological gender distinction, so adjectives show no agreement: wéle sakár ‘a young boy’, binía sakár ‘a young girl’.

In Kinubi, the majority of nouns have no morphological plural, the plurality being marked by the plural demonstrative or by a plural word, as in Núbi dol [Nubi PL] ‘the Nubi’. However, some words may have a plural suffix, like sókol ‘thing’ vs. sokol-ín [thing-PL] ‘things’, or bakán ‘place’ vs. bakan-á [place-PL] ‘places’; some words may have a plural prefix like nas in nas Morú [PL Moru] ‘the Moru’; some have a suppletive form like mára ‘woman’ vs. nuswán ‘women’; and others have a stress shift like bágara ‘cow’ vs. bagará ‘cows’.

Etymologically, all the numerals are related to the Arabic lexicon and keep the unit-ten order (wáy u talatín [one and thirty] ‘thirty-one’). However, the speaker may switch to English to express high numbers, like millions or billions. In counting, álf ‘thousand’ is often followed by wáy ‘one’, as in (2), which is obviously due to the influence of Swahili (elfu moja mia tisa hamsini na tano).

The demonstrative pronouns are used as definite markers, e.g. rági de [man DEF] ‘the man’. Indefiniteness may be marked by the omission of the definite marker or by the use of the numeral wáy ‘one’, as in sókol wáy [thing one] ‘one thing’.

Noun modifiers — demonstrative/definite marker, adjective, numeral — generally stand after the noun, as in wéle kámsa [boy five] ‘five boys’, béle de [country DEM] ‘this country’, and rujál tinén [man two] ‘two men’. However, the word kíla ‘each’, a Swahili borrowing, precedes the noun (as in Swahili).

Number agreement is not systematic. On the one hand, we find úmun ketir-ín [they many-pl] ‘they are numerous’, but on the other hand Swahíli ya ketír [Swahili cop numerous] ‘Swahili are numerous’.

Generally, the possessor noun or the suffix pronoun follows the possessed noun and is introduced by a genitive marker (tá-, rarely bitá-), as in kurá tá-ki [leg poss-2sg] ‘your leg’ and Núbi ta Mombása [Nubi poss Mombasa] ‘the Nubi of Mombasa’. A possessive construction lacking a marker is also possible but often renders specific expressions or compounds, as in láam gába [animal forest] ‘animal’ or rután núbi [language Nubi] ‘Kinubi’.

Unlike Arabic, Kinubi has no special elative form of the adjective; comparison is marked by fútu after the adjective, as in (3).

Fútu may be replaced by záidi min ‘more than’:

6. Verb phrase ⇫ ¶

All the verbs have an invariable stem. There is no derivational morphology, except some compound verbs with só ‘to do’.

The verb has several TAM (tense-aspect-mood) markers, as illustrated in (5), and listed in Table 5.

(5) a. úwo máši [3SG go] ‘he went’

b. úwo kan máši [3SG IMPF go] ‘he was going’

c. úwo gi-máši [3SG IPFV-go] ‘he goes’

d. úwo bi-máši [3SG FUT-go] ‘he will go’

e. úwo kalás máši [3SG finished go] ‘he’s gone’

Stative verbs are generally used without any marker, e.g. ána féker ‘I think’.

The imperative is formed by the use of the verbal root alone. For some verbs, there is a suppletive form, e.g. taál ‘come’ (já ‘to come’). Likewise, a verb introduced by an auxiliary is non-inflected:

Existential sentences are usually formed with fí (negated má fí), as in

The main way to render possessive sentences is by using the verb éndisi: ána éndisi bé [1SG have house] ‘I have a house’. Other possibilities exist, such as the use of an existential sentence accompanied by ma ‘with’:

Má is placed before the predicate or the verb as negation: ána má árifu [1SG NEG know] ‘I don’t know’, de má Núbi ‘he’s not a Nubi’. In Ugandan Kinubi, má or máfi often comes after the predicate: ána árifu má [1SG know NEG] ‘I don’t know’.

7. Simple sentences ⇫ ¶

The word order at clause level is SVO, as in (9).

However, topicalization is quite common, as in (10):

8. Complex sentences ⇫ ¶

The relative clause is introduced by al:

It may also be introduced by abú:

Generally, the subordinate comlement clause directly follows the verb:

However, in Uganda it may be introduced with the complementizer gál, as in:

Reduplication may be used to emphasize the meaning of a verb, an adjective, or an adverb: yal-á dugag-ín dugag-ín [child-PL small-PL small-PL] ‘very young kids’.