moribund, with only older adults speaking the language and not using it with their children. All speakers also use Sudanese Arabic. The Dilling call themselves Warki, while the Dilling speakers of Kudur call themselves Kwashe.[1] Another ethnic minority that speak Dilling are the Debri people, an ethnic group of several thousand people from South Kordofan in Sudan
Dilling has 9 vowels a,e,ẹ,ḙ,i,ọ,ǒ,u and 21 consonants as following (Gebel Delen 1920:3):[full citation needed]
Explosives
voiceless voiced
Fricatives
voiceless voiced
Liquidates
Nasales
Dentales
t d
(s)
l r
n
Gutturales
k g
h
ṅ
Gutturopalatales
ñ
Palatales
t d
š y
ń
Labiales
p b
ƒ w
m
Nouns
In Dilling there is no difference grammatical gender in nouns verb forms, pronouns and relative terms, to express a gender in a person one adds expression to clarify such as for example korti (man) or ḙli (woman). These are added apposition without a connector. With animals the name classifies gender and species, ‘tẹ’ “female cow” and ‘tere’ “bull”. (Gebel Delen 1920:40-41)[full citation needed]
Dilling does not have specific and non specific articles but it uses personal pronouns of the 3rd person sg/pl and is placed in front of the noun ‘tẹ id’ “the (mentioned) man”(Gebel Delen 1920:42).[full citation needed] Exceptions are names and If the noun has an attribute afterwards it is either placed in front, between the noun and attribute or it is multiplied (Gebel Delen 1920:42).[full citation needed]
Pronouns
Personal pronouns are:
e->I
a->You
te/te->He/she/it
i->We
u->You
ti->They
Often times one only puts first person pronouns in front of the verb and leaves it out when referring to the 3rd person sg/pl or if they wanted to use it as a noun when they want to stress this part, they would put it in front of the verb. (Gebel Delen 1920:96)[full citation needed]
Numbers
Numbers 1-29 are written in Dilling starting from 30 numbers are either accumulating the numbers or taken from Arabic especially starting from 100(Gebel Delen 1920:90-92).[full citation needed]
