NILOTIC LANGUAGES

group of related languages spoken in Uganda, Kenya, southern Sudan, and northern Tanzania. These languages are usually classified as belonging to the Eastern Sudanic subbranch of the Chari-Nile branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. The languages of this group were formerly divided, primarily on the basis of racial and cultural considerations, into two groups named Nilotic (which includes Shilluk, Dinka, and Nuer in southern Sudan; Acholi in northern Uganda; and Luo in western Kenya and in Tanzania) and Nilo-Hamitic (which includes Bari and Lotuho in southern Sudan; Karamojong, Nandi, and Suk in Uganda; Turkana in Kenya; and Masai, extending from southern Kenya into northern Tanzania). Recently, however, a number of scholars have produced a considerable amount of evidence showing that the two groups of languages are closely related and should be considered as one group; these linguists often divide the Nilotic languages into a western group, including Shilluk, Nuer, and Luo; an eastern group, including Masai and Turkana; and a southern group, including Nandi and Suk. In Nilotic sentences, the subject of a principal clause usually precedes the verb. The languages are tone languages, often using tones to distinguish the singular of a noun from its plural or to indicate the syntactic role of a word in a particular sentence. Some of the languages also indicate plurals by means of suffixes.