Alternate Names: Buma, Bume, Turkwana
Dialects: Northern Turkana, Southern Turkana. Inherently intelligible of Toposa , speakers, but hostile to them. Partially intelligible of Ng’aKarimojong ,, Jie ,, and Nyangatom ,, but all 5 are ethnically distinct. A few phonological, lexical, and discourse marker differences between them. Northern Turkana , and Eastern Toposa , are reportedly more similar to Southern Turkana ,, but Western Toposa , is further apart linguistically. The 4 varieties form a subgroup divided in the middle by the Kenya-Sudan border. Lexical similarity: 85% similarity with Ng’aKarimojong ,, 76% with Teso ,.
Genealogy:
Demographics: 989,000 (2009 census). 593,000 monolinguals.
Language Use: Vigorous. Home, social gatherings. All ages. 30% also use English [eng]. 40% also use Swahili [swh]. Swahili use increasing. Also use Daasanach [dsh], Pökoot [pko]. Used as L2 by El Molo [elo].
Language Development: Literacy rate in L1: 5%–10%. Literacy rate in L2: 25%–50%. NT: 1986.
Typology: VSO; highly inflectional; grammatical tone; vowel harmony; voiceless vowels.
Writing System: Latin
Nation of Origin: Kenya
Other Comments: A few Somali and Gikuyu have shops in the area. Semi-nomadic. Unfriendly to other nomadic tribes due to rivalry over livestock. Traditional religion, Christian.