Nyangatom (also Inyangatom, Donyiro, Dongiro, Idongiro) is a
Nilotic
The Nilotic peoples are peoples Indigenous people of Africa, indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uga ...
language spoken in
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
by the
Nyangatom people
The Nyangatom also known as Donyiro and pejoratively as Bumé are Nilotic agro-pastoralists inhabiting the border of southwestern Ethiopia, southeastern South Sudan, and the Ilemi Triangle. They speak the Nyangatom language.
Overview
The Nyang ...
. It is an oral language only, having no working orthography at present. Related languages include
Toposa and
Turkana, both of which have a level of mutual intelligibility; Blench (2012) counts it as a dialect of Turkana.
Phonology
Vowels
* Vowel length is contrastive in Nyangatom, as in 'completely' vs. 'always'
* Before a pause, short vowels carrying a single, simple tone are devoiced.
Consonants
Moges Yigezu, however, analyzes Nyangatom as having implosive stops, rather than voiced egressive stops.
[Yigezu, Moges. "Some notes on Implosive consonants in Nyangatom." Studies in Ethiopian Languages 5 (2016): 11-20]
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Bibliography
*Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2007. "Ñaŋatom language" in Siegbert Uhlig (ed.) ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol 3''. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 1131–1132.
References
{{Eastern Sudanic languages
Languages of Ethiopia
Eastern Nilotic languages