Dinka (Thuɔŋjäŋ)

Dinka is a member of the Western Nilotic of Nilo-Saharan languages. It is spoken mainly in soutern Sudan by about 2-3 million people, who call them selves Dinka (Jiëŋ). There are five major dialect divisions: Agar, Bor, Padaŋ and Rek, which are more or less mutually intelligible. The Rek dialect is considered the standard or prestige variety. There are also speakers of Dinka in Egypt, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, UK and USA.

A number of methods for writing Dinka using the Latin alphabet were developed by missionaries during the 19th and 20th centuries. Information about the language first appeared in Die Dinka-Sprache in Central-Afrika by Johannes Chrysostomus Mitterrutzner, which was publised in 1866. The current Latin orthography is derived from the alphabet developed for the southern Sudanese languages at the Rejaf language conference in 1928.

Dinka alphabet

Dinka pronunciation

Notes

Vowels without accents can be either clear or creaky
Long vowels are indicated by doubling the vowel letters, e.g. aa, ee, etc

Sample text in Dinka

Jɔ̈ɔ̈l wäär nyuuc wädït
Aacä ye teet.
Të cɔk kek ɣa luöi ruëëny
Ka cä ye dhuk nhom keek
Rin jäl aye wut theek
Yen aye ɣɛn keek theek
Na cïk röt ye theek
Ke aköl le ɣɛn ye gäm keek
piny abï ɣo dak ɣo keek.

Source: http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/dinka/sample.html

Links

Information about the Dinka language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinka_language
http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/dinka/
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~agamlong/index.en.html
http://www.sil.org/silewp/abstract.asp?ref=2004-003
http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/Dinka

Dinka-English dictionary (PDF)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/Language data/Comparative Dinka lexicon converted.pdf

Other languages written with the Latin alphabet