Atuot people
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| approx. 116,000 (2017)[1][2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 South Sudan (Lakes State[3]) | |
| Languages | |
| Atuot and Dinka[1][2] | |
| Religion | |
| Traditional African religion and Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Dinka and Nuer |
The Atuot (Reel/Apek) are a Nilotic ethnic group of South Sudan who live in Yirol in Lakes State. They comprise a majority of the population in Greater Yirol payam of Yirol West.[4]
Language
[edit]The Atuot people speak Reel, which was first recognized as a distinct language from Dinka by anthropologist John Burton in 1987, and is widely spoken in Yirol West. 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 estimates that the number of Atuot Reel speakers is 50,000.[1][3]
Atwot speakers distinguish two dialects to their language, Thok Reel Cieng Luai and Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam with the latter 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 three contrastive vowel lengths.[7]
Culture
[edit]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 they travel with their herds to grazing grounds, they do not go far from where they had started.[3] There are six subsections of the Atuot: Jilek, Luac, Jikeyi (Rorkec), Kuek, 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] In some moments, Apak (a Dinka section) is considered to be Atwot, but they speak Thong Apak which is a dialect of South Central Dinka.[5]
Atwot country
[edit]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
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 "Reel Ethnologue". Ethnologue. 19. Ethnologue. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
- 1 2 3 "Dinka, South Central Ethnologue". 19. Ethnologue. Retrieved 23 September 2023.
- 1 2 3 Trust, Gurtong. "Atuot (Reel)". www.gurtong.net. Retrieved 2016-10-25.
- ↑ Reid, p. 18
- 1 2 Reid, pp. 20-21
- ↑ Reid, p. 22
- ↑ Reid, pp. 196
- ↑ Roettger, p. 24
- ↑ "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
[edit]- Burton, John W. (1987). A Nilotic World: the Atuot-Speaking Peoples of the Southern Sudan. London: Greenwood. ISBN 0313255016.
- Burton, John W. (1981). God's Ants: a Study of Atuot Religion. St. Augustin, West Germany: Anthropos Institute. ISBN 3921389410.
- Reid, Tatiana (2010). Aspects of phonetics, phonology and morphophonology of Thok Reel (M.Sc.). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/5312.
- Roettger, Larry and Lisa (1989). "A Dinka Dialect Study". Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages (6). Dallas: SIL publication.
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