The Temein or Nuba Hills languages are a group of Eastern Sudanic languages

Eastern Sudanic languages

Ehret 2001 [1984]Ehret, published in 2001 but circulating in manuscript form since at least 1984, calls the family "Eastern Sahelian", and idiosyncratically adds the Kuliak languages and Berta, which Bender assigns to higher-level branches of Nilo-Saharan, and reassigns Nyima to the southern branch...

 spoken in Sudan

Sudan

Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...

.

Languages

The Temein languages are not closely related.

• Temein
  Temein language
  The Temein or Nuba Hills languages are a group of Eastern Sudanic languages spoken in Sudan.-Languages:The Temein languages are not closely related.*Temein *Doni *Tese...
  
   (Ronge; 10,000 speakers)
• Doni (Keiga Jirru)
• Tese
  Tese language
  Tese is an Eastern Sudanic language spoken in the Nuba Hills of Sudan.Ethnologue lists Keiga Jirru as an alternate name, but that is a distinct Temein language.-References:*...
  
   (Dese)

Temein is the most conservative

Conservative (language)

In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or modality is one that has changed relatively little over its history, or which is relatively resistant to change...

 language; Doni and Tese have been strongly influenced by Kadu languages

Kadu languages

The Kadu, Kadugli–Krongo, or Tumtum languages are a small language family, once included in Kordofanian but since Thilo Schadeberg widely seen as Nilo-Saharan. However, there is little evidence, and a conservative classification would treat them as an independent family. There are three...

.

In his 2001 classification of the Nilo-Saharan language phylum

Nilo-Saharan languages

The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet...

, Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret

Christopher Ehret , a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a writer on African history and African historical linguistics, particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record...

 added the Nyima languages

Nyima languages

The Nyima languages are a pair of languages of Sudan spoken by the Nyimang that are part of the Eastern Sudanic family of Nilo-Saharan languages.The languages are Ama and Dinik ....

, which Bender considers an Astaboran

Astaboran languages

The Astaboran , Northern Eastern Sudanic, or Eastern k Sudanic languages form one of two primary divisions of the Eastern Sudanic languages. They are characterized by having a /k/ in the pronoun "I/me", as opposed to the Kir–Abbaian languages, which have an /n/.The most famous Astaboran language...

 group, to the Temein family, "a classification which suggests the author has not seriously considered all the relevant data (none of which is referenced in the bibliography)" (Blench 2007:2)

External links

• Temein languages (Roger Blench 2007)
• Temein at Ethnologue
  Ethnologue
  Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...