The Tima live in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan. Their community has roughly 7,000 members, about 1,000 of them having moved to Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan due to various reasons. Those living outside the homeland were the first to observe that their children do not speak the language properly anymore. However, also those Tima who still live in the Nuba Mountains noticed that Arabic is taking over as means of communication not only between the Tima and their neighbours from various language groups, but also within the community itself.
To counterbalance this development, the Tima have formed a language committee who sought the help of linguists with the aim to be able to write their language and to collect as many words as possible in a dictionary in order to motivate their children using their ancestors’ language. This primer was compiled by the Tima Language Committee, and it may be used in school teaching and literacy programmes. The following subject areas are presented:
phonemic inventory of the Tima language, singular / plural, numerals, pronouns, regional terms: places and mountains, neighbours of the Tima, clan names, birds and wild animals, domestic animals (among them 18 locust species and 12 lizard species), body parts, positions / prepositions, description of the locative, Tima dishes, plant species, fieldwork, texts concerning baobab and sausage trees, description of the bird and dog festival, pottery and the building of a granary, history of the Tima / myth of the clan splitting, fable of hyena and lion, singing: song text about the Tima language
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