Arabic is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world. Having emerged in the 1st century, it is named after the Arab people; the term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula, as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece.
A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Linguists do not typically consider pidgins as full or complete languages.
Coptic is an Egyptian language family of closely related dialects, representing the most recent developments of the Egyptian language, and historically spoken by the Copts, starting from the third century AD in Roman Egypt. Coptic was supplanted by Arabic as the primary spoken language of Egypt following the Muslim conquest of Egypt and was slowly replaced over the centuries. Coptic has no native speakers today, although it remains in daily use as the liturgical language of the Coptic Orthodox Church and of the Coptic Catholic Church. Innovations in grammar, phonology, and the influx of Greek loanwords distinguish Coptic from earlier periods of the Egyptian language. It is written with the Coptic alphabet, a modified form of the Greek alphabet with several additional letters borrowed from the Demotic Egyptian script.
Tok Pisin, often referred to by English speakers as New Guinea Pidgin or simply Pidgin, is a creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in the country. However, in parts of the southern provinces of Western, Gulf, Central, Oro, and Milne Bay, the use of Tok Pisin has a shorter history and is less universal, especially among older people.
Equatoria is a region of southern South Sudan, along the upper reaches of the White Nile. Originally a province of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, it also contained most of northern parts of present-day Uganda, including Lake Albert and West Nile. It was an idealistic effort to create a model state in the interior of Africa that never consisted of more than a handful of adventurers and soldiers in isolated outposts.
Sudanese Arabic, also referred to as the Sudanese dialect, Colloquial Sudanese or locally as Common Sudanese refers to the various related varieties of Arabic spoken in Sudan as well as parts of Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Chad. Sudanese Arabic has also influenced a number of Arabic-based pidgins and creoles, including Juba Arabic, widely used in South Sudan, as well as Ki-Nubi, spoken by the Nubi communities of Kenya and Uganda.
The Nubi language 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 Sudanese soldiers who were settled there by the British colonial administration. It was spoken by about 15,000 people in Uganda in 1991, and an estimated 10,000 in Kenya; another source estimates about 50,000 speakers as of 2001. 90% of the lexicon derives from Arabic, 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.
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.
Nobiin, also known as Halfawi, Mahas, is a Northern Nubian language of the Nilo-Saharan language family. "Nobiin" is the genitive form of Nòòbíí ("Nubian") and literally means "(language) of the Nubians". Another term used is Noban tamen, meaning "the Nubian language".
The Sierra Leonean Creole or Krio is an English-based creole language that is lingua franca and de facto national language spoken throughout the West African nation of Sierra Leone. Krio is spoken by 96 percent of the country's population, and it unites the different ethnic groups in the country, especially in their trade and social interaction with each other. Krio is the primary language of communication among Sierra Leoneans at home and abroad, and has also heavily influenced Sierra Leonean English. The language is native to the Sierra Leone Creole people, or Krios, a community of about 104,311 descendants of freed slaves from the West Indies, Canada, United States and the British Empire, and is spoken as a second language by millions of other Sierra Leoneans belonging to the country's indigenous tribes. Krio, along with English, is the official language of Sierra Leone.
Sri Lanka Indo-Portuguese, Ceylonese Portuguese Creole or Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole (SLPC) is a language spoken in Sri Lanka. While the predominant languages of the island are Sinhala and Tamil, the interaction of the Portuguese and the Sri Lankans led to the evolution of a new language, Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole (SLPC), which flourished as a lingua franca on the island for over 350 years (16th to mid-19th centuries). SLPC continues to be spoken by an unknown number of Sri Lankans, estimated to be extremely small.
Juba Arabic, also known since 2011 as South Sudanese Arabic, is a lingua franca spoken mainly in Equatoria Province in South Sudan, and derives its name from the South Sudanese capital, Juba. It is also spoken among communities of people from South Sudan living in towns in Sudan. The pidgin developed in the 19th century, among descendants of Sudanese soldiers, many of whom were recruited from southern Sudan. Residents of other large towns in South Sudan, notably Malakal and Wau, do not generally speak Juba Arabic, tending towards the use of Arabic closer to Sudanese Arabic, in addition to local languages. Reportedly, it is the most spoken language in South Sudan despite government attempts to discourage its use due to its association with past Arab rule.
Ma'di is a Central Sudanic language found in Uganda and South Sudan. It is one of the Moru–Madi languages. The Madi people refer to their language as Ma'di ti, literally "Ma'di mouth".
The varieties of Arabic, a Semitic language within the Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems that Arabic speakers speak natively. There are considerable variations from region to region, with degrees of mutual intelligibility that are often related to geographical distance and some that are mutually unintelligible. Many aspects of the variability attested to in these modern variants can be found in the ancient Arabic dialects in the peninsula. Likewise, many of the features that characterize the various modern variants can be attributed to the original settler dialects as well as local native languages and dialects. Some organizations, such as SIL International, consider these approximately 30 different varieties to be separate languages, while others, such as the Library of Congress, consider them all to be dialects of Arabic.
South Sudan is a multilingual country, with over 60 indigenous languages spoken. The official language of the country is English which was introduced in the region during the colonial era.
KiKAR is, or was, a Swahili pidgin spoken among the King's African Rifles (KAR) of British colonial East Africa. Although there were, by design, no native Swahili speakers among the KAR, Swahili still functioned as the lingua franca, and a simplified version of it served as a military jargon and pidgin for the troops.
Port Jackson Pidgin English or New South Wales Pidgin English is an English-based pidgin that originated in the region of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales in the early days of colonisation. Stockmen carried it west and north as they expanded across Australia. It subsequently died out in most of the country, but was creolised in the Northern Territory at the Roper River Mission (Ngukurr), where missionaries provided a safe place for Indigenous Australians from the surrounding areas to escape deprivation at the hands of European settlers. As the Indigenous Australians who came to seek refuge at Roper River came from different language backgrounds, there grew a need for a shared communication system to develop, and it was this that created the conditions for Port Jackson Pidgin English to become fleshed out into a full language, Kriol, based on English language and the eight different Australian language groups spoken by those at the mission.
Palestinian Arabic is a dialect continuum of mutually intelligible varieties of Levantine Arabic spoken by most Palestinians in Palestine, Israel and in the Palestinian diaspora.
Joseph Bringi Hassan Marona was a Sudanese Episcopalian bishop.
