Noon language
| Noon | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Senegal |
| Region | Thiès |
| Ethnicity | Serer-Noon |
|
Native speakers
|
10,000–50,000 (2007) |
|
Niger–Congo
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | noon1242 |
Noon (Non, None, Serer-Noon, Serer-Non) is a Cangin language of Senegal spoken in the Thiès region (14°47'0"N / 16°55'0"W). There is an estimated population of 10,000- 50,000 speakers worldwide, rendering this language to be vulnerable.Ethnologue reports that it is 84% cognate (and 52% intelligible) with Lehar, essentially a divergent dialect, and 68% cognate with the other Cangin languages.
The Noon people identify themselves ethnically as Serer. However, their language, often called Serer-Noon on the assumption that it is a Serer dialect, is not closely related to the principal language of the Serer population, Serer-Sine.
Like many of the local languages in Senegal, the Noon language is officially recognized as one of the national languages of country.
The Noon language is written using the Latin alphabet. In 2005, a decree was passed by the Senegalese Government in order to regulate the spelling to Noon. It has been proposed that here are 47 letters that are used when writing in Noon, listed below (in two sets, for convenience).
The Noon language contains 27 consonants. Note that the glottal stop is not written at the beginning of the word, and it has no separate form for upper-case letters. The pre-nasalized occlusive marking is shown explicitly like in the following symbols, mb, nd, ñj, ŋg. In addition, the used nasal quality is justified by the enunciation point of the occlusive it precedes.
Noon, like other Senegalese languages, gives the possibility of extensive and varied combinations within its large graphic representation (ñ, ŋ). Twin consonants are possible within words between vowels and are noted by two identical letters, such as ɓɓ, cc, ff, hh, kk, ll, mm, nn, pp, ss, tt, ww, yy. However, this excludes the consonants b, d, g, j, ɗ, ƴ, ñ, and those that are pre-nasalized occlusives. Additionally, the "ɗ" letter does not exist in a word as well as in final voiced stops using the letters b, d, g and j. Also, in Noon, a long vowel is represented by a digraph that is considered a letter, while a geminate consonant is interpreted as a series of two identical letters.
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