Turkana language

Turkana
ŋatùrk(w)anà
Native toKenya, Ethiopia
RegionTurkana County
EthnicityTurkana
Native speakers
990,000 (2009 census)[1]
Dialects
  • Northern Turkana
  • Southern Turkana
Language codes
ISO 639-3
tuv – Turkana
Glottologturk1308

Turkana /tɜːrˈkɑːnə/[2] is the language of the Turkana people of Kenya and Ethiopia. It is spoken in northwestern Kenya, primarily in Turkana County, which lies west of Lake Turkana. It is one of the Eastern Nilotic languages, and is closely related to Karamojong, Jie and Teso of Uganda, to Toposa spoken in the extreme southeast of South Sudan, and to Nyangatom in the South Sudan/Ethiopia Omo valley borderland; these languages together form the cluster of Ateker Languages.

The collective group name for these related peoples is Ateker.

  1. ^ Turkana at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh