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The Atwot (Reel) are a Nilotic ethnic group of South Sudan who live near Yirol in Lakes State. They comprise a majority of the population in the payam of Yirol West.[4]
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| approx. 116,000 (2017)[1][2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
 South Sudan (Lakes State[3]) | |
| Languages | |
| Atwot and Dinka[1][2] | |
| Religion | |
| Traditional African religion and Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Dinka and Nuer |
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]
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 do not 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]
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