| Old Nubian Language |
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Information AboutOld Nubian Language |
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Old Nubian is the name given to the written language used in medieval Nubia from the 8th to the 15th Century AD. It is an ancient variety of the Nubian Languages , which is still spoken in the area; in particular, it is probably ancestral to the modern-day Nobiin variety. It is preserved in at least a hundred pages of documents, mostly of a Christian religious nature, written using a modified form of the Coptic ( Greek ) script; the best known is ''The Martyrdom of Saint Menas ''. It is the oldest written sub-Saharan African Language apart from Meroitic , Geez and Sabaean . WRITING Old Nubian is written with an ; and "ng", thought to be a ligature of two Greek gammas. Each letter could have a line drawn above it, when it was:
The sound /i/ could be written ε, ει, η;, ι, or υ; /u/ was normally written ου. In diphthongs, a Dieresis was sometimes used over ι to indicate a semivowel y. Geminate consonants were written double; long vowels were usually not distinguished from short ones. Tones were not marked. Punctuation marks included a high dot •, sometimes substituted by a double backslash \, used roughly like an English Period or Colon , a slash / used like a Question Mark , and a double slash // sometimes used to separate verses. GRAMMAR Noun Old Nubian has no Gender , nor any Article s. The Noun consists of a stem to which Grammatical Case Suffix es and Postposition s are added; the main ones are:
The commonest plural is in ''-gu-''; eg ''uru-gu-na'' "of kings", or ''gindette-gu-ka'' "thorns ( Object )", becoming ''-agui-'' in the predicative. Rarer plurals include ''-rigu-'' (eg ''mug-rigu-ka'' "dogs (obj.)" (predicative ''-regui-'') and ''-pigu-''. Pronoun The basic Pronoun s are:
Demonstratives include ''in-'' "this", ''man-'' "that"; interrogatives include ''ngai-'' "who?", ''min-'' "what?", ''islo'' "where?", ''iskal'' "how?". Verb The , two different Preterite s, Future , and Imperative . For each of these, there are Subjunctive and Indicative forms. It conjugates according to person, eg for ''doll-'' "wish" in the present tense:
EXAMPLE TEXT ''Kitka gelgelosuannon Iisusi manyan trika• dolle polgara pessna• papo iskoelimme ikka.'' Literally: "Rock and-when-they-rolled-away Jesus eye pair high raising he-said father I-thank you." Translated: "And when they rolled away the rock, Jesus, raising his eyes high, said: Father, I thank you." EXTERNAL LINK http://dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2744.pdf extended details on all the letters of the Old Nubian alphabet, especially the additional ones, can be found within this Unicode proposal. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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