Dinka language in the context of "Luo languages"

The Sudd (Arabic: السد, romanized: as-Sudd, Nuer: Baki̱ec, Dinka: Toc) is a vast swamp in South Sudan, formed by the White Nile's Baḥr al-Jabal section. The Arabic word sudd is derived from sadd (سد), meaning "barrier" or "obstruction". The term "the sudd" has come to refer to any large solid floating vegetation island or mat. The area which the swamp covers is one of the world's largest wetlands and the largest freshwater wetland in the Nile Basin.

For many centuries the swamp, and especially its thicket of vegetation, proved an impenetrable barrier to navigation along the Nile. The ancient Egyptians failed to penetrate the Sudd and reach the areas south of it. In AD 61, a party of Roman soldiers sent by the Emperor Nero proceeded up the White Nile but were not able to get beyond the Sudd, which marked the limit of Roman penetration into equatorial Africa. For the same reasons in later times, the search for the source of the Nile was particularly difficult; it eventually involved overland expeditions from the central African coast, so as to avoid having to travel through the Sudd.

Southern Sudan (Arabic: حكومة جنوب السودان Ḥukūmat Janūb as-Sūdān; Dinka: Lɔ̈k Bïkrotmac Paguot Thudän) was an autonomous region consisting of the ten southern states of Sudan between its formation in July 2005 and independence as the Republic of South Sudan in July 2011. The autonomous government was initially established in Rumbek and later moved to Juba. It was bordered by Ethiopia to the east; Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south; and the Central African Republic to the west. To the north lies the predominantly Arab and Muslim region directly under the control of the central government. The region's autonomous status was a condition of a peace agreement between the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) and the Government of Sudan represented by the National Congress Party ending the Second Sudanese Civil War. The conflict was Africa's longest running civil war.

The Maasai (/ˈmɑːsaɪ, mɑːˈsaɪ/) are a Nilotic ethnic group inhabiting northern, central and southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, near the African Great Lakes region. Their native language is the Maasai language, a Nilotic language related to Dinka, Kalenjin and Nuer. Except for some elders living in rural areas, most Maasai people speak the official languages of Kenya and Tanzania—Swahili and English.

The Maasai population has been reported as numbering 1,189,522 in Kenya in the 2019 census compared to 377,089 in the 1989 census. However, many Maasai view the census as government meddling and either refuse to participate or actively provide false information.

The Nuer language (Thok Naath, "people's language") is a Nilotic language of the Western Nilotic group. It is spoken by the Nuer people of South Sudan and in western Ethiopia (region of Gambela). The language is very similar to Dinka and Atuot.

The language is written with a Latin-based alphabet. There are several dialects of Nuer, although all share one written standard. For example, final /k/, is pronounced in the Jikany dialect but is dropped in other dialects despite being indicated in the Nuer orthography used by all.

The Dinka people (Dinka: Jiɛ̈ɛ̈ŋ) are a Nilotic ethnic group native to South Sudan. The Dinka mostly live along the Nile, from Mangalla-Bor to Renk, in the region of Bahr el Ghazal, Upper Nile (two out of three provinces that were formerly part of southern Sudan), and the Abyei area of the Ngok Dinka in South Sudan.

They number around 4.5 million, according to the 2008 Sudan census, constituting about 40% of the population of that country and the largest ethnic group in South Sudan. The Dinka refer to themselves as Muonyjang (singular) and jieng (plural).

A voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɲ⟩, a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The letter ⟨ɲ⟩ is visually similar to ⟨ɳ⟩, the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, and to ⟨ŋ⟩, the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem.

The IPA symbol derives from ⟨n⟩ and ⟨j⟩, ⟨n⟩ for nasality and ⟨j⟩ denoting palatalization. In Spanish and languages whose writing systems are influenced by Spanish orthography, it is represented by the letter ⟨ñ⟩, called eñe ([ˈeɲe]). In French and Italian orthographies the sound is represented by the digraph ⟨gn⟩. Occitan uses the digraph ⟨nh⟩, the source of the same Portuguese digraph called ene-agá (lit. 'en-aitch'), used thereafter by languages whose writing systems are influenced by Portuguese orthography, such as Vietnamese. In Catalan, Hungarian, Aragonese and many African languages, as Swahili or Dinka, the digraph ⟨ny⟩ is used. In Albanian and Serbo-Croatian, the digraph (Nj) is used, and sometimes, for the languages with the Cyrillic script that used to be part of Yugoslavia, uses the (Њњ) Cyrillic ligature that might be part of the official alphabet. In Czech and Slovak, /ɲ/ is represented by letter ⟨ň⟩ whilst Kashubian and Polish use ⟨ń⟩. Latvian and Livonian use ⟨ņ⟩. In Bengali it is represented by the letter ⟨ঞ⟩.