All about the ancient tribes
People who reside in South Sudan’s marsh and savanna land on both sides of the Nile River are known as Nuer (sometimes spelled Nuer). They are native speakers of an Eastern Sudanic language that is a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family.
RELIGION. The Nuer religion is based on the belief in a divine creator or high deity, Kuoth, who is responsible for the preservation of life and health, as well as in a number of lesser spirits.
They are said to have originated as a subset of the Naath people who migrated out of the Gezira but southward into a desolate dry country they named ‘Kwer Kwong,’ which was located in southern Kordofan at the time. As a result of centuries of seclusion and influence from Luo peoples, they have distinguished themselves from the Naath as an ethnic group.
They are a savanna people that reside in the savanna land around the central marshes of the Nile basin, predominantly in South Sudan, and are also known as Jieng. This group of people speak a Nilotic language that is classed as part of the Eastern Sudanic branch of the Nilo-Saharan languages family and is closely connected to the Nuer.
Nuer – History and Interactions between Cultures It is believed that Nuer who live east of the Nile refer to their western cousins as ‘homeland Nuer,’ and that they have a continuous oral history showing that their spread over the Nile, all the way to the Ethiopian border, has a 200-year heritage.
The Nuer, like the Dinka, are known for dressing in very little or no clothes, particularly among the men. Cloth or skin shorts will be worn by women more frequently than long skirts. Necklaces and headdresses made of wire and beads are popular among women. Young males are initiated by circumcision and six slashes over the bridge of their nose.
There was a statistically significant difference in the mean height of Dinka males (176.4 +/- 9 cm) and that of Nuer men (175.7 +/- 9 cm), compared to the mean height of Anuak men (171.7 +/- 8 cm) and Shilluk men (172.6 +/- 6.1 cm). The mean height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) of Nuer women were much lower than those of the other tribes.
They number around 4.5 million individuals and account for approximately 12 percent of the total population of the country.. This ethnic group constitutes the majority of the population of South Sudan.
Evans-ethnographic Pritchard’s study The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People was originally published in 1940 and was written by the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–73), who was born in Kenya.
Pronunciation
Both the Nuer and the Dinka graze cattle on the wide savannas of the area, which they call home. The Nuer are totally transhuman, however the Dinka are less so since their habitat is less severe and well hydrated, consisting of orchard savanna rather than the treeless plains of Nuerland, and as a result, they are barren transhuman.
The Dinka people, who constitute the majority ethnic group in South Sudan, speak the language, which has around 1,400,000 native speakers. Dinka culture and civilization is mostly an oral tradition that was formalized through the use of Arabic and Latin scripts throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, respectively. Dinka.
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Learn Dinka | DINKA VOCAB 1 |
In Dinka, the word for greeting is kudual (Spoken in South Sudan).
The Dinka (a Nilotic people) are the largest ethnic group in South Sudan, accounting for roughly 35.8 percent of the country’s total population in 2011.