Thomas Anour has posted a number of Bible extracts: Mark 10:13-18, John 1:1-13, and James 4:1-3. Comparing these to a published translation from 2002 (from which he sometimes diverges slightly) and to the anonymous dictionary linked in the previous post makes it possible for a beginner to parse much of the text. No more examples of /ħ/ were heard; but another pharyngeal, /ʕ/, was. This phoneme is absent from the online audio version of this Bible translation, but can be heard clearly in Thomas Anour's pronunciation of at least three frequent words, despite occasional variation, and seems to contrast with the glottal stop /ʔ/, as illustrated by the the last few lines of the following table. While one of the words with /ʕ/ is an Arabic loan, the rest clearly are not.
Unfortunately, I don't know yet where it's coming from. I have yet to find any useful cognates to the words with the pharyngeal in the rest of Nilotic, or even in the meager Jumjum dictionary. "We" corresponds to Nuer <kɔn> and (probably?) Dinka /wɔ̂ɔk/.
| English | Mabaan (Anour) |
Mabaan (anon) |
Mabaan (Anderson) |
| and | [ʕɔ́sì] | ɔci | ʔɔ́cé |
| so that | [ʕáŋkàː] | aŋ-ka | ʔáŋkà |
| because (< Ar.) | [ʕásàan] | acaan | |
| where | [ʔáŋɛ̀] | aŋɛ | |
| quotative particle | [ʔàgɪ́] | agi | ʔàgē |
| we | [ʔɔ̂ːn] | ɔɔn | ʔɔ̆ɔn |
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The Dinka and the Nuer ~ Maaban pronouns "we" may share a common element; they don't seem to be directly cognate.
The -ON element, as in Nueer and Maaban is also found in Teso-Turkana (~*(i)ŋw-on).
Nuer, as well as Pari and Lango, have final -n(V) over the whole paradigm. It probably was present in half of the personal pronouns and seems to have been generalized.
The -OK as in Dinka seems more isolated. It is found in Maa, which may be a conincidence; it might correspond to -c- in Southern Nilotic (does assibiliation occur otherwise?).
Moreover, the -k is generalized for plural personal pronouns in Dinka.
In summary, I don't see a way to connect these two, unless the Dinka pronoun is
(something like won) + (something with k)
and the Nuer one is
(k- something) + (something like won)
Again re "kon": George Starostin assumes a "k mobile", i.e. a fossilized prefix sometimes present in nouns that often occur in the plural (e.g. "tree"), and related to the -k (definite) plural marker (e.g. in Southern Nilotic).
It is tempting to understand -k in the Dinka plural personal pronouns also as this plural marker.
However, it was usually lost in Western Nilotic. Perhaps it was retained / reactivated via clitics in pronouns?
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