Southern Nilotic languages
The Southern Nilotic languages are spoken mainly in western Kenya and northern Tanzania. They form a division of the larger Nilotic language family, along with the Western Nilotic languages and the Eastern Nilotic languages.Subdivisions
The Southern Nilotic languages are generally divided into two groups, Kalenjin and Tatogoa, although there is some uncertainty as to the internal coherence of the Kalenjin branch. Southern Nilotic languages appear to have been influenced considerably by Cushitic languages. The Kalenjin languages are spoken by the Kalenjin people. This family spreads all around Uganda and to some of Kenya. The Tatoga languages consist of the Omotik language and of the larger Datooga language, or more fitting, Datooga dialect cluster.
Proto-Kalenjin has been reconstructed by Rottland.Historically, Southern Nilotic has undergone extensive contact with a "missing" branch of East Cushitic that Heine refers to as Baz. Proto-Baz reconstructions proposed by Heine :
| Gloss | Proto-Baz |
| bat | *rɛɛrɛɛʕ |
| bell | *kor |
| bovine, male | *aʀ |
| calf | *maʀ |
| claw | *ʕidd |
| cow dung | *zig |
| curse | *hab- |
| eat, to | *am |
| eight | *siziet |
| ewe, virgin | *subeen |
| feathers | *goro- |
| fifty | *konom |
| fingernail | *ʕidd |
| forty | *afaram |
| fur | *goro- |
| goat, male | *quar- |
| goat/sheep, young | *maqal |
| grass | *ʕaus |
| head | *mɛtɛħ |
| honey | *malab |
| hundred | *boqol |
| lake | *baz |
| look, to | *ilaal |
| lost, to get | *bod |
| louse | *insir |
| lover | *saani |
| mud | *zig |
| nine | *sagaal |
| pot, clay | *ɖeri |
| rain | *roob |
| red | *buri- |
| scratch, to | *quut |
| sea | *baz |
| see, to | *kas |
| seven | *tizzaba |
| six | *lVħ |
| smoke | *iʀi |
| spear | *tor |
| suck, to | *nug |
| ten | *tamman |
| thirty | *sozzom |
