Atwot
Total population
approx. 116,000 (2017)[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
 South Sudan (Eastern Lakes State[3])
Languages
Atwot and Dinka[1][2]
Religion
Traditional African religion and Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Dinka and Nuer

The Atwot (Reel) are a Nilotic ethnic group of South Sudan who live near Yirol in Eastern Lakes State. They comprise a majority of the population in the payam of Yirol West.[4]

Language

The Atwot people speak the Atwot language (Atwot: Thok Reel), which was first recognized as a separate language from Dinka by anthropologist John Burton in 1987. It is a Western Nilotic language of the Dinka-Nuer group, closely related to the Nuer language and more distantly to the Luo languages. SIL International estimate that the number of Atuot speakers is 50,000.[1][3]

Atwot speakers distinguish two dialects to their language, Thok Reel Cieng Luai and Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam with Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam being the more lexically conservative of the two.[5] Most Atwot are bilingual in Dinka and Atwot.[2][6]

A distinctive feature of the language is its having of three contrastive vowel lengths.[7]

Culture

The Atwot share much of their culture with their neighbours. Like the Dinka and Nuer, they are also semi-sedentary cattle-herding pastoralists, meaning that while the travel with their herds to grazing grounds, they don't go far from where they had started.[3] There are seven subsections of the Atuot: Jilek, Luac, Jikeyi (Rorkec), Kuek, Apak, Akot and Ajong. The Ajong subsection claims to speak their own dialect known as Thok-ajong, a hard version of Thok Reel. Jikeyi and Kuek speak Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam. The Luac, Jilek, and Akot speak Thok Reel Cieng Luai.[1] The Apak speak Thong Apak which is dialect of South Central Dinka.[5]

Atwot country

There were approximately 24,700 Atwot at the time of the local dialect survey in 1987.[8] SIL estimates that there were over 50,000 Atwot in 1998.[1] The population of Yirol West in the 2008 Sudanese census was 103,190 although not all inhabitants of the municipality are Atwot.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Reel Ethnologue". Ethnologue. 19. Ethnologue. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "Dinka, South Central Ethnologue". 19. Ethnologue. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 Trust, Gurtong. "Atuot (Reel)". www.gurtong.net. Retrieved 2016-10-25.
  4. ↑ Reid, p. 18
  5. 1 2 Reid, pp. 20-21
  6. ↑ Reid, p. 22
  7. ↑ Reid, pp. 196
  8. ↑ Roettger, p. 24
  9. ↑ "5th Sudan Population and Housing Census 2008: Priority Results". South Sudan National Bureau of Statistics. South Sudan Commission for Census, Statistics and Evaluation. Retrieved 26 October 2016.

Bibliography

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