Kuku dialect
| Kuku | |
|---|---|
| Region | South Sudan and Uganda |
| Ethnicity | Kuku people |
|
Native speakers
|
(undated figure of 60,000) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | kuku1285 |
This article is about the language for the ethnic group see Kuku people.
The Kuku language, also called Kutuk na Kuku (Kuku language) belongs to the Bari language group, of the Southeastern Nilotic branch of the Nilotic language family of the Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda. There is no standardized writing system for Kuku; it is sometimes written using the alphabet of a related language such as Bari or Kakwa, with the addition of characters to represent sounds that are not present in the other language. For example, the Bari alphabet can be adjusted for use in Kuku by adding the digraphs gb and kp to represent the voiced and voiceless labiovelar stops, respectively.
Kuku Alphabets
A E I O U Ö – B D G J K L – M N P R S T – W Y ’B ’D Ý Ŋ – NY GB KP
a e i o ö – b d g j k l – m n p r s t – w y ’b ’d ý ŋ – ny gb kp
...which has two digraphs not found in the Bari alphabet.
Kuku is a tone language. It has agglutinative verbal morphology, with extensive suppletion. Nouns are divided into two genders. There is a vowel harmony system that primarily involves an ATR distinction. Differences between Kuku and Bari include the phoneme inventory, pronouns, tonal phonology, and tense formation. The most striking difference may be in the function of the qualitative morpheme, which is used to indicate a definite/indefinite contrast in Bari, but indicates an aspectual contrast in Kuku. Kuku language have a variety of borrowed words. some words are of Kisawahili, and Arabic language that are altered a little to sound different. Today a number of words seem to be derived from English too by the more educated Kuku people. More educated Kuku people mix the language with some English in it mostly for example if they want to say "you are not serious" they say "Do mb'an sirias".
The traditional folk songs of the Kuku people are Bula and Kore. The songs are sung and traditional drums and the horn are played as instruments. The dance include shuffling of feet and stumping for the Bula, and some form of rhythmic jumping for the Kore.
Modern music is also common among the Kuku. Due to the many years of the civil war, the culture is heavily influenced by the countries neighboring South Sudan. Most Kuku fled to Kenya and Uganda where they interacted with the nationals and learnt their languages and culture. For most of those who remained in the country, or went North to Sudan and Egypt, they greatly assimilated Arabic culture.
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Wikipedia