Temein language

Temein
Temein
Ronge
Native to	Sudan
Region	Nuba Hills
Ethnicity	Temein
Native speakers	13,000 (2006); (6,000 in the ancestral area, 7,000 scattered in other towns)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Southern Eastern Temein Temein; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	teq
Glottolog	nucl1339
ELP	Temein
	Temein is classified as Severely Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger .

Last updated November 04, 2025

Temein, also known as Ron(g)e, is an Eastern Sudanic language spoken by the Temein people of the Nuba Hills in Sudan.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	voiceless	p	t̪	t		k
Plosive	voiced	b	d̪	d	ɟ	g
Nasal		m	n̪	n	ɲ	ŋ
Fricative				s
Rhotic				r
Approximant		w		l	j

/p/ may have allophones of [ɸ, f] when in word-initial position.
/s/ may have an allophone of [ʃ] in word-medial intervocalic positions.
The sequence /nt/ can have an allophone of [ɽ] in intervocalic positions.^[2]

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

References

↑ Temein at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
↑ Tucker, Archibald N.; Bryan, Margaret A. (1966). The Temein Group. In Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa (Handbook of African Languages), 2nd edn.: London: Oxford University Press. pp. 324–334.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

Temein language (Roger Blench 2007)

External links

Temein basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

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[e18-1] Temein at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

[2] Tucker, Archibald N.; Bryan, Margaret A. (1966). The Temein Group. In Linguistic Analyses: The Non-Bantu Languages of North-Eastern Africa (Handbook of African Languages), 2nd edn.: London: Oxford University Press. pp. 324–334.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

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