| Group: | Atwot |
| Population: | approx. 116,000 (2017)[1] |
| Popplace: | (Lakes State[2]) |
| Rels: | Traditional African religion and Christianity |
| Langs: | Atwot and Dinka[3] |
| Related: | Dinka and Nuer |
The Atwot (Reel) are a Nilotic ethnic group of South Sudan who live near Yirol in Lakes State. They comprise a majority of the population in the payam of Yirol West.[4]
See main article: Atwot language. The Atwot people speak the Atwot language (Atwot: Thok Reel), which was first recognized as a separate language from Dinka by anthropologist John Burton in 1987. 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 estimate that the number of Atuot speakers is 50,000.[1] [2]
Atwot speakers distinguish two dialects to their language, Thok Reel Cieng Luai and Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam with Thok Reel Cieng Nhyam being the more lexically conservative of the two.[5] Most Atwot are bilingual in Dinka and Atwot.[3] [6]
A distinctive feature of the language is its having of three contrastive vowel lengths.[7]
The Atwot share much of their culture with their neighbours. Like the Dinka and Nuer, they are also semi-sedentary cattle-herding pastoralists, meaning that while the travel with their herds to grazing grounds, they do not go far from where they had started.[2] There are seven subsections of the Atuot: Jilek, Luac, Jikeyi (Rorkec), Kuek, Apak, 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] The Apak speak Thong Apak which is dialect of South Central Dinka.[5]
There were approximately 24,700 Atwot at the time of the local dialect survey in 1987.[8] SIL estimates that there were over 50,000 Atwot in 1998.[1] The population of Yirol West in the 2008 Sudanese census was 103,190 although not all inhabitants of the municipality are Atwot.[9]