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Dinka is a generic name for a group of dialects in the Dinka Group of Western Nilotic languages. (Webbook)
Ethnologue lists the classification as: Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic, Western, Dinka-Nuer, Dinka.
"Jaang" is a cover term for all Dinka languages. (Ethnologue)
It is spoken by the Jien (Dinka) along the White Nile in the Sudan. (Webbook)
According to information compiled from Ethnologue:
There are four major dialects in Dinka: Padang, Agar, Rek, and Bor. All have a "high level of mutual intelligibility" (Duerksen, personal communication, 1983). A study of Dinka dialects has been produced by Roettger and Roettger (1981). No one dialect is the accepted standard at present. (Webbook)
SIL International calls Dinka a "macrolanguage" under which five Dinka languages are listed. According to information compiled from Ethnologue on these five, the dialects are:
Dinka has great regional importance in the Sudan. (Webbook)
Dinka has a Romanized orthography developed from the 1928 Rejaf language conference; some modifications have been suggested from the work of the Institute of Regional Language's Literacy Project. There is no Arabic script for Dinka. (Webbook)
Current orthography uses extended Latin characters and diacritics. There may be more than one system. [need more info!]
Alphabets:
"Language Museum" sample texts (NB- these may not be standard or official orthographies):
No information on legacy 8-bit fonts.
Unicode fonts such as Arial Unicode MS, Code 2000 have the necessary characters. [verify!]
Two layouts at the OpenRoad "Unicode keyboard layouts" page, http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/files/
No information on use in Sudan or Ethiopia. There is some use online for literacy purposes in immigrant communities in Australia.
Web content includes a page with Dinka poetry at: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~agamlong/poetry/index.html
None known of.
Dinka:
Northeastern Dinka:
Northwestern Dinka:
South Central Dinka:
Southeastern Dinka:
Southwestern Dinka
Andrew Cunningham, Victoria State Library, Melbourne, Australia
OpenRoad page on "Dinka (Thuɔŋjäŋ)" has a number of resources: http://www.openroad.net.au/languages/african/dinka/
Latin & diacritic character picker http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/pickers/latin/
Which dialect(s) to use for localisation?
Conditions in southern Sudan (the result of conflict) and the active work of some emmigrant communities may mean that localisation may be based among the latter for a time?
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Dinka," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Dinka-root.html )
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Northeastern Dinka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dip
______, "Northwestern Dinka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=diw
______, "South Central Dinka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dib
______, "Southeastern Dinka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dks
______, "Southwestern Dinka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=dik
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
______, "ISO 639-3 Macrolangauge Mappings," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/macrolanguages.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Dinka language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinka_language