# Koalib language

Koalib (also called Kwalib, Abri, Lgalige, Nirere and Rere) is a Niger–Congo language in the Heiban family spoken in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan. The Koalib Nuba, Turum and Umm Heitan ethnic groups speak this language.

## Dialects and locations

Koalib dialects and locations (Ethnologue, 22nd edition):
* Nginyukwur dialect: Hadra, Nyukwur, and Umm Heitan
* Ngirere dialect: Abri area
* Ngunduna dialect: Koalib hills area
* Nguqwurang dialect: Turum and Umm Berumbita

## Phonology
### Consonants

| | | Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Velar |
| | | Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | plain | lab. |
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | ʈ | c | k | kʷ |
| Plosive | voiced/imp. | b | d | ᶑ | ɟ | | |
| Plosive | prenasal | ᵐb | ⁿd | ᶯɖ | ᶮɟ | ᵑɡ | ᵑɡʷ |
| Fricative | Fricative | f | | | ʃ | | |
| Nasal | Nasal | m | n | | ɲ | ŋ | ŋʷ |
| Rhotic | Rhotic | | r | ɽ | | | |
| Approximant | Approximant | | l | | j | w | w |
* The voiced retroflex equivalent is an implosive sound [ᶑ] rather than a standard plosive [ɖ].
* Gemination occurs among plosive, nasal, liquid and approximant sounds.
* Sounds /f, t, ʃ, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic or pre-consonantal position can be heard as voiced [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ, ɡʷ]. In post-consonantal position, /f, t, ʃ, k/ are heard as [v, ð, ʒ, ɡ].
* In final position, sounds /ɟ, f/ are heard as [c, p].
* Sounds /p, t, ʈ, c, k, kʷ/ in intervocalic position can be heard as tense [pː, tː, ʈː, cː, kː, kːʷ].

### Vowels

| | Front | Central | Back |
| Close | i | | u |
| Close-mid | e | | o |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɔ |
| Open | | a | |

## Writing system

It is written using the Latin script, but includes some unusual letters. It shares a tailed R (Ɽ) with other Sudanese languages, and uses a letter resembling the at sign (@) for transcribing the letter ع in Arabic loanwords. The Unicode Standard includes R WITH TAIL at code points U+027D (lowercase) and U+2C64 (uppercase), but the Unicode Consortium in 2004 declined to encode the at sign separately as an orthographic letter due to lack of evidence of use.
SIL International maintains a registry of Private Use Area code points in which U+F247 represents LATIN SMALL LETTER AT, and U+F248 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER AT. However, they have marked this PUA representation as deprecated since September 2014, and the current version of their corporate PUA character assignments package recommends using U+24D0 ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A and U+24B6 Ⓐ CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A for that letter instead.

## Publications

The New Testament was published in Koalib in 1967.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Koalib at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
* 1 2 Ethnologue report Archived 2008-09-05 at the Wayback Machine for language code: kib, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
* ↑ Quint, Nicolas; Kokko, S. Ali Karmal (2009). The phonology of Koalib: A Kordofanian language of the Nuba mountains (Sudan). Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
* ↑ "Resolved Public Review Issues (Public Review Issue #40)". Unicode. 2004-11-08. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
* ↑ Charis SIL Archived 2010-04-13 at the Wayback Machine font documentation, retrieved on Apr. 12, 2010.
* ↑ Constable, Peter, and Lorna A. Priest (January 17, 2019) SIL Corporate PUA Assignments 5.2a Archived 2010-02-23 at the Wayback Machine. SIL International Archived 2007-12-01 at the Wayback Machine. pp. 59-60. Retrieved on July 20, 2020.