The Nubi language (also called Ki-Nubi, Arabic: كي-نوبي, romanized: kī-nūbī) is a Sudanese Arabic-based creole language spoken in Uganda around Bombo, and in Kenya around Kibera, by the Ugandan Nubians, many of whom are descendants of Emin Pasha's Sudanese soldiers who were settled there by the British colonial administration.
[5] Many Nubi speakers are Kakwa who came from the Nubian region, first into Equatoria, and from there southwards into Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
[6][7] Jonathan Owens argues that Nubi constitutes a major counterexample to Derek Bickerton's theories of creole language formation, showing "no more than a chance resemblance to Bickerton's universal creole features" despite fulfilling perfectly the historical conditions expected to lead to such features.
[4][2] Ineke Wellens gives the following orthography for Nubi where it differs from the IPA symbols: /ʃ/ = sh; /tʃ/ = ch; /dʒ/ = j; /ɲ/ = ny; /w/ = w or u; /j/ = y or i; /θ/ = th; /ð/ = dh; /x/ = kh; /ħ/ = ḥ.
Jonathan Owens gives 5 broad inflectional categories of nouns:[4] The table below shows examples of each type of pluralisation.
The apostrophe has been placed before the stressed syllable:[4] Pluralisation 1Nuswan may be supplemented by a suffix as if it were type 3, thus, nuswana could also mean "women".