Maʼdi language

Not to be confused with Southern Ma& § x02BC;di language, or Madí language.

Maʼdi (pronounced [màɗí]) is a Central Sudanic language spoken in Uganda and South Sudan. It is one of the Moru–Madi languages. The Madi people refer to their language as Maʼdi ti, literally "Maʼdi mouth".

Maʼdi
Maʼdi ti
Region	Uganda, South Sudan
Ethnicity	Madi
Native speakers	(310,000 cited 1982–2002)[1]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Central Sudanic Eastern Moru–Madi Southern Maʼdi
Dialects	Moyo Adjumani (Oyuwi) Lokai Ɓurulo Pandikeri
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mhi
Glottolog	madi1260
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Maʼdi people are found in Magwi County in South Sudan, and in Adjumani and Moyo districts in Uganda. Their population is about 390,000 (90,000 in South Sudan).

Maʼdi is mutually intelligible with Oluʼbo, Lugbara, Moru, Avokaya, Kaliko and Logo, all of which are also Moru–Madi languages.

Sociolinguistics

Most Maʼdi people are bilingual. In Uganda, the educated class speaks English as the second language and some also speak Swahili. In South Sudan, the educated Maʼdis speak English and/or Arabic. The South Sudanese Maʼdi also speak Juba Arabic, spoken in South Sudan and not understood in the North. The form of Juba Arabic spoken by the Maʼdi is influenced by the Nubi language spoken in Uganda among Muslims who are mainly descendants of Gordonʼs troops. Loanwords in Ugandan Maʼdi are therefore mainly of English and/or Swahili origin and in Sudanese Maʼdi of English and/or Juba Arabic origin.

There is an interesting linguistic interaction between the Maʼdi, the Acholi and the Kuku. Most Maʼdis speak Acholi but hardly any Acholi speak Maʼdi. This is possibly because during the first civil war in the Sudan, most Sudanese Maʼdi were settled among the Acholi in Uganda. Possibly for the same reasons, most Kukus speak fluent Ugandan Maʼdi, but hardly any Maʼdi speak Kuku. It is still possible even today to find among the Sudanese Maʼdi people who can trace their ancestry to the neighbouring tribes – Bari, Kuku, Pajulu, Acholi, etc. Hardly any of them can now speak their ancestral languages; they speak Maʼdi only and have become fully absorbed into the Maʼdi community.

Crazzolara claims that there are linguistic traces of Maʼdi found in Nilotic languages like Dinka (especially Atwot), Nuer and Lwo (Acholi, Alur and Lango) and among the Bantu (Nyoro and Ganda).^{[citation needed]} There are also some claims which maintain that there are Acholi speaking clans in Pakele in Adjumani (in Adjumani District), whose Maʼdi accent is said to be completely different from that of the other Maʼdi in the area. In Adjumani itself, the Oyuwi (ojuwt) clans are said to speak three languages: Maʼdi, Kakwa and Lugbara.

Phonology

Maʼdi is a tonal language, which means that meanings of words depend on the pitch. There are three tone levels (high, mid and low). The language has a number of implosives: /ɓ/ (ʼb), /ɗ/ (ʼd), /ʄ/ (ʼj), /ɠɓ/ (ʼgb). There are a number of secondarily (/kʷ/) and doubly articulated sounds (/ɡb/, /kp/) in addition to the singularly articulated sounds (/f/, /v/). The language also has glottal stops (/ʔ/), which can be found word medially and initially.

Consonants

Consonants in Maʼdi^[2]

		Labial	Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Labial– velar	Glottal
			plain	labial	plain	labial	plain	labial		plain	labial
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʷ			k	kʷ	kp	ʔ	ʔʷ
	voiced	b	d	dʷ			g	gʷ	gb
	prenasalized	ᵐb	ⁿd	ⁿdʷ			ᵑg	ᵑgʷ	ᵑᵐɡ͡b
Implosive		ɓ	ɗ		ʄ				ɠɓ (ɓʷ)
Affricate	voiceless				tʃ	tʃʷ
	voiced				dʒ
	prenasalized				ⁿdʒ
Fricative	voiceless	f	s							h	(hʷ)
	voiced	v	z
	prenasalized	ᶬv
Nasal		m	n		ɲ		ŋ		ŋm (mʷ)
Trill			r	rʷ
Approximant			l	lʷ	j				w

Vowels

There are ten vowels in the language, conveniently though inaccurately transcribed as +ATR /a, e, i, o, u/ and −ATR /ʌ, ɛ, ɨ, ɔ, ʊ/. This convention was chosen for "visual clarity" and only approximates the phonetic values.^[3]

[-ATR] vowels in Maʼdi

.	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɨ		ʊ
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		ʌ

[+ATR] vowels in Maʼdi

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Orthography

Currently there are two systems used in writing Maʼdi, categorised as the old and the new system. The old system completely ignores tones, making reading more difficult. The old system also uses only five vowels (a, e, i, o, u). The new systems employs ten vowels (see the tables on the previous section). It also identifies four tones: high (close), mid, low and falling.

Works in Maʼdi

Printed material in Maʼdi is scarce. The only general published works in Maʼdi are missionary publications such as the translation of the New Testament, and prayer and song booklets by the Catholic missionaries. The Maʼdi Ethnic and Heritage Welfare Association in Britain publishes a quarterly bilingual (English and Maʼdi) paper called Maʼdi Lelego.

In the spring of 1998, Radio Uganda began regular broadcasts in Maʼdi.