Ghulfan language

Ghulfan (also Gulfan, Uncu, Uncunwee, Wunci, Wuncimbe) is a Hill Nubian language spoken in the central Nuba Mountains in the south of Sudan. It is spoken by around 40,000 people in the Ghulfan Kurgul and Ghulfan Morung hills, south of Dilling. The villages in which the language is spoken are Dabri, Karkandi, Katang, Kurgul, Namang, Ninya, Moring, Ota, Shigda, and Tarda. It is closely related to Kadaru, with which it forms the Kadaru-Ghulfan subgroup of Hill Nubian.^[2]

Ghulfan
Uncunwee
Native to	Sudan
Region	Nuba Mountains
Ethnicity	Ghulfan
Native speakers	40,000 (2022)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Northern Eastern Nubian Central Hill Kadaru–Ghulfan Ghulfan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ghl
Glottolog	ghul1238
ELP	Uncunwee

Ethnologue reports that the use of Ghulfan is decreasing as younger speakers switch to Sudanese Arabic with only adults speaking the language now and that there are no monolingual speakers of the language.^[2]

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Post-alv./ Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m	n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless		t	ʈ	tʃ	k
	voiced	b	d	ɖ	dʒ	ɡ
Fricative					ʃ
Lateral			l
Rhotic			r	ɽ
Approximant		w			j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e eː		o oː
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a aː

^[3]