Midob language

Midob
Native to	Sudan
Region	West
Native speakers	unknown (50,000 cited 1993)
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Astaboran Nubian Midob
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mei
Glottolog	mido1240

Midob (also spelt Meidob) is the language of the Midob people in North Darfur. It is genetically part of the Nubian language family which is part of the Nilo-Saharan language phylum. Apart from their homeland, Midob speakers also live in the Khartoum area and Jezirat Aba. The Midob people call their language tìd-n-áal, literally "mouth of the Midob", and themselves tìddí (singular), tìd (plural). There are an estimated 50,000 Midob speakers in two main dialects, Urrti and Kaageddi.

Recent research on Midob has been done by Thelwall (1983) and Werner (1993). Both studies are concerned with the Urrti dialect.

Phonology

The following tables show the phonological consonants and vowels without phonetic variations and without more recent Arabic loans.

Vowels

i, ii		u, uu
e, ee	ə, əə	o, oo
	a, aa

Note: All vowels occur long and short. The mid central vowel ə only appears in Midob, not in other Nubian languages.

Consonants

p	t	c	k
b	d	ɟ	g
f	s	ʃ		h
m	n	ɲ	ŋ
w	r, l	j

Tone

Midob is a tonal language with two registers: High and Low. Tone is both lexical and grammatical.

Lexical tone

àadí	we (exclusive)
áadí	stick
àadì	light

Grammatical tone

ná	you (sgl obj)
nà	him, her

Grammatical Overview

Midob is an agglutinative language like the other Nubian languages. The default word order is SOV.

Verb

The verbs consist of:

verbal stem ( + extension ) + tense/aspect.

The stem is not being altered. Extensions modify or add meaning to the verb like Negation, Intention, Affirmation, Completed action, Plurality of subject–object or action, Durative, Habitual and sometimes can be combined (especially Negation). Tense/Aspect: Midob has two basic tenses (Perfect and Continuous) plus Intentional. There are sets of suffixes for indicative, subjunctive and two question forms (to ask for a fact, i.e. "When/Why..." and to verify a fact, i.e. "Did you...").

Sets of personal endings:

	Indicative	Subjunctive	Question1	Question2
Perfect	x	x	x	x
Continuous	x	x	x	x
Intentional	x	-	-	-

References

• Werner, Roland (1993) 'Tìdn-áal: A Study of Midob (Darfur-Nubian)' Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
• Thelwall, Robin (1983) 'Meidob Nubian: Phonology, Grammatical Notes and Basic Vocabulary' in Bender, M. L. (Ed), Nilo-Saharan Language Studies, V.13, East Lansing

External links

• Midob from mille langues blog
• Midob Material from the Research of Roland Werner