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The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi, ) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the Ugandan Nubians, many of whom are descendants of Emin Pasha's soldiers who were settled there by the British Empire. It was spoken by about 15,000 people in Uganda in 1991 (according to the census), and an estimated 10,000 in Kenya; another source estimates about 50,000 speakers as of 2001. 90% of the lexicon derives from Arabic language,Ineke Wellens. The Nubi Language of Uganda: An Arabic Creole in Africa. BRILL, 2005 but the grammar has been simplified, as has the sound system. Nairobi has the greatest concentration of Nubi speakers. Nubi has the prefixing, suffixing and compounding processes also present in Arabic.
Many Nubi speakers are Kakwa people who came from the Nubian region, first into Equatoria, and from there southwards into Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They rose to prominence under Ugandan President Idi Amin, who was Kakwa.
Jonathan Owens argues that Nubi constitutes a major counterexample to Derek Bickerton's theories of creole language formation, showing "no more than a chance resemblance to Bickerton's universal creole features" despite fulfilling perfectly the historical conditions expected to lead to such features. Scholars (Sebit, 2023) have suggested that the Nubi Language was the main point of unity among the Nubi community in east Africa, to survive the hardship they experienced from different community components.
There are five vowels in Nubi. Vowels are not distinguished by length except in at least two exceptions from Kenyan Nubi (which are not present in Ugandan dialects) where bara means "outside" and is an adverb while baara means "the outside" and is a noun, and also where saara meaning "bewitch" is compared to sara meaning "herd, cattle". Despite this, there is a tendency for vowels in stressed syllables to be registered as long vowels.
Each of the vowels has multiple and the exact sound of the vowel depends on the surrounding consonants.
Speakers may use Arabic phonology for words for which the Arabic pronunciation has been learned. The retroflex version of the /r/ sound may also occur and some dialects use /l/ in its place. Gemination are very unusual in Nubi. These less common phonemes are shown in brackets.
Ineke Wellens gives the following orthography for Nubi where it differs from the IPA symbols: // = sh; /t/ = ch; // = j; // = ny; /w/ = w or u; /j/ = y or i; // = th; // = dh; /x/ = kh; // = ḥ.
Stress can change the meaning of words for example saba means "seven" or "morning" depending on whether the stress is on the first or second syllables respectively. Vowels are often omitted in unstressed, final syllables and sometime even the stressed final "u" in the passive form may be deleted after "m", "n", "l", "f" or "b". This can cause syllables to be realigned even across words.
| 1 | yo'wele | yowe'le | boy(s) |
| 2 | ke'bir | ku'bar | big thing(s) |
| 3 | 'tajir | taji'rin | rich person(s) |
| 3 | 'seder | sede'ra | tree(s) |
| 4 | 'marya | nus'wan | woman / women1 |
| 5 | muze | waze | old man / old men |
follow the noun and some adjectives have singular and plural forms which must agree with the noun. Adjectives may also take the prefixes al, ali, ab or abu which mark them as Habitual aspect. Possessor nouns follow the possessed, with a particle ta placed in between. In the case of inalienable possession the particle is omitted.
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