Ghulfan is a member of the Central Nubian group of Eastern Sudanic languages. It is spoken by about 16,000 people mainly in the area south of Dilling (الدلنج) in the central Nuba Mountains in the northwest of South Kordofan State in the south of Sudan. Ghulfan speakers are found particularly in the villages Dabri, Karkandi, Katang, Kurgul, Namang, Ninya, Moring, Ota, Shigda and Tarda in the Ghulfan Kurgul and Ghulfan Morung hills. There are also communities of Ghulfan speakers in Cairo in Egypt, and in Washington D.C. in the USA.
Ghulfan is also known as Gulfan, Uncu, Uncunwee, Unchunwii, Wunci or Wuncimbe, and speakers of Ghulfan call their language Unchunwii. It is closely related to Kadaru, which is spoken in the same area.
Ghulfan is spoken mainly by adults, while many Ghulfan children are being raised monolingually in Sudanese Arabic, the only official language of Sudan. Ghulfan people are also migrating to other areas, where they end up speaking Arabic. As a result, Ghulfan is considered endangered. It was not traditionally a written language, however some speakers are creating an orthography using the Latin script.
Ghulfan has two tones: a high tone, which can be marked with an acute accent (á), and a low tone, which is usually unmarked.
Download an alphabet chart for Ghulfan (Excel)
Download details of the Ghulfan alphabet and pronunciation provided by Wolfram Siegel (PDF)
Information about Ghulfan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghulfan_language
https://www.elararchive.org/dk0091/
https://endangeredlanguages.com/lang/4572
https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/ghul1238
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/17824583/ghulfan-grammar-sketch
Afitti, Daju Mongo, Dilling, Gaam, Ghulfan, Kadaru, Narim, Old Nubian
Languages written with the Latin alphabet
Page created: 30.12.24. Last modified: 30.12.24
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