Nuer Language

Nuer, or Thok Nath (lit. people's language), is a language of the West Nilotic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. It is spoken primarily in South Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as in diaspora communities, notably in East Africa, Australia and the USA. Nuer has a speaker population estimated to be between 900,000 and 2 million, but is yet to be subject to robust documentation and description.

Nuer dialects

The Nuer people belong to eight sections (or clans). These are Bul, Lek, Jikany, Jegai, Adok, Nyong, Ador, Gawaar and Lou. The varieties spoken by each section are conventionally grouped into two dialect clusters, known as Western Nuer and Eastern Nuer.

Western Nuer is spoken to the west of the White Nile in the Republic of South Sudan. It is used to refer to the varieties spoken in seven Nuer sections: Bul, Lek, Jegai, Adok, Nyong, Ador and Jikany. It is also known as Bentiu after the main town in the territory where the speakers live.

Eastern varieties of Nuer are spoken to the east of the White Nile in the Republic of South Sudan and in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Eastern Nuer comprises four dialects: the Gawaar dialect spoken by the Gawaar section, the Lou dialect spoken by the Lou section, the Jikany dialect spoken by the Jikany in the east of South Sudan and Ethiopian Jikany, spoken in Gambella. The Jikany variety spoken in the east of South Sudan is also known as the Nasir dialect after the town of Nasir. The Jikany/Nasir dialect forms the basis for the orthography. The Ethiopian Jikany are said to speak an Eastern variety close to the Nasir dialect. For more on dialectal variation in Nuer, see Reid (2019: 17-18).

Data sources

Data from three varieties of Nuer were used in the creation of this resource:

  • Bentiu (Western Nuer)
  • Jikany (Eastern Nuer)
  • Lou (Eastern Nuer)

Data from the Jikany dialect is further divided in two sub-varieties: Jikany Gatjok and Jikany Gatjak, named after the subsections that use each variety.

Data on nouns, collected by Irina Monich, comes from Bentiu and Jikany varieties, while data on verbs, collected by Tatiana Reid, comes from Lou Nuer. The variety used for the audio examples differs from entry to enty and is always indicated directly underneath the example. The IPA transcrption of the headword in each entry is Jikany Gatjiok for nouns and Lou for verbs.