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Glite Dictionary
🌊 Of the Nile region 📚 About these languages 🗣️ East African languages
Nilotic

Nilotic

1 9.9
Relating to a group of languages spoken in Central and East Africa
  • adjective
  • /nɪˈlɒtɪk/
  • Specialized
: nilótico
  • Equally important are the issues of land and citizenship rights for Congolese ethnic Tutsis, whose plight has become politicized with the introduction of ideological bias in the Great Lakes region between Bantu and Nilotic populations.

Examples

  • I saw a woman with a dark face and a name that in a Nilotic language signified the blue-gray hour before sunrise when her mother gave birth to her in a ditch.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • And you can see where the Nilotic and the Bontu mix comes together here in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa.

  • The <Nilotic> languages are vital for understanding the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Africa.

  • During my travels, I learned that the <Nilotic> people have a rich tradition of storytelling.

  • The <Nilotic> group of languages features unique grammatical structures that differ significantly from Bantu languages.

Compounds

Nilotic language
  • Specialized
1 9.9

A language spoken in East Africa by groups such as the Maasai and Dinka

Surface Forms

Nilotic positive

Morphology

Nilotic = Nile (transparent) = Nile + ic

Derived directly from the place-name 'Nile' with the productive suffix '-ic' to mean 'of or relating to the Nile' (applied to the language group).

Etymology

Nilotic comes from the river name Nile and the ending -otic, meaning 'of the Nile'. So when we describe grammar or words as Nilotic, we mean they belong to the languages spoken in the Nile region today.