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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]
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]
The Atwot share much of their culture with their neighbours. Like the Dinka and Nuer, they are also semi-sedentarycattle-herdingpastoralists, 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]
1987年の現地方言調査の時点では、アトウォット族は約24,700人だった。[ 8 ] SILは1998年にはアトウォット族が50,000人を超えていたと推定している。[ 1 ] 2008年のスーダン国勢調査では、イロル西の人口は103,190人だったが、自治体の住民全員がアトウォット族というわけではない。[ 9 ]