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.
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Dialects
Dilling has one dialect – Debri, which is spoken on the mountain Gebel Debri, south of Ghulfan language.
Phonology
Dilling has 9 vowels a,e,ẹ,ḙ,i,ọ,ǒ,u and 21 consonants as following (Gebel Delen 1920:3):
| +
!
!Explosives
voiceless voiced
!Fricatives
voiceless voiced
!Liquidates
!Nasales |
| Dentales | t d | (s) | l r | n |
| Gutturales | k g | h | | ṅ |
| Gutturopalatales | | | | ñ |
| Palatales | t d | š y | | ń |
| Labiales | p b | ƒ w | | m |
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 korti (man) or ḙli (woman). These are added apposition without a connector. With animals the name classifies gender and species, 'tẹ' "female cow" and 'tere' "bull". (Gebel Delen 1920:40-41)
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 'tẹ id' "the (mentioned) man"(Gebel Delen 1920:42). 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. (Gebel Delen 1920:42)
Pronouns
The personal pronouns are:
e -> I
a -> You
te -> He/she/it
i -> We
u -> You
ti -> They
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. (Gebel Delen 1920:96)
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. (Gebel Delen 1920:90-92)
1 bēn oder ben
2 óren
3 tọcuṅ (töduṅ)
4 kẹmíńen
5 tišin
6 kwarten
7 kwálān
8 ẹddin
9 wēn
10 búren
11 bure bé kǒ
12 bur óro kǒ
13 bur tẹ kǒ
14 bur kẹn kǒ
15 bur tís kǒ
16 bur kwártu kǒ
17 bur kwalā kǒ
18 bur ẹddu kǒ
19 bur wẹ kǒ
20 tarben
21 tar(be) bé kǒ
22 tar(be) óro kǒ
23 tar tē kǒ
24 tar kẹn kǒ
25 tar(be) tís kǒ
26 tar(be) kwártu kǒ
27 tar kwalā kǒ
28 tar(be) ẹddu kǒ
29 tar(be) wẹ kǒ
