The Nilotic languages are a group of related languages spoken across a wide area between South Sudan and Tanzania by the Nilotic peoples.

Etymology

The word Nilotic means of or relating to the Nile River or to the Nile region of Africa.

Demographics

Nilotic peoples, who are the native speakers of the languages, originally migrated from the Gezira area in Sudan. Nilotic language speakers live in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

Subdivisions

According to linguist Joseph Greenberg, the language family is divided up into three subgroups: Before Greenberg's reclassification, Nilotic was used to refer to Western Nilotic alone, with the other two being grouped as related "Nilo-Hamitic" languages. Blench (2012) treats the Burun languages as a fourth subgroup of Nilotic. In previous classifications, the languages were included within the Luo languages. Starostin (2015) treats the Mabaan-Burun languages as "West Nilotic" but outside the Luo level.

Reconstruction

Over 200 Proto-Nilotic lexical roots have been reconstructed by Dimmendaal (1988). Dimmendaal reconstructs the proto Nilotic consonants as follows:

Numerals

Comparison of numerals in individual languages: