The Elgon languages are languages of the Southern Nilotic Kalenjin family spoken in the Mount Elgon area in western Kenya and eastern Uganda. According to the Ethnologue, there are two main Elgon languages: Kupsabiny (spoken by about 120 000 people) and Sabaot (spoken by about 134 000 people). Sabaot is a common name assumed by various related peoples, including the Kony, Pok, and Bong'om, whose respective languages are considered separate languages by Rottland (1982). The Southern Nilotic languages are spoken mainly in western Kenya and northern Tanzania (with one of them, Kupsabiny or Sapiny, being spoken on the Ugandan side of Mount Elgon). ... The Kalenjin languages are a group of twelve related Southern Nilotic languages spoken in Kenya, eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania. ... Mount Elgon is an extinct volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with native language biblical texts. ...

The Terik people, living east of Lake Victoria wedged in between the Nandi, Luo and Luyia, spoke or speak a dialect closely related to Pok and Bong'om. According to their own oral history they are "people of Mount Elgon"; this is confirmed by Bong'om traditions that "the people who later called themselves Terik were still Bong'om when they left Elgon and moved away in a southern direction" (Roeder 1986:142). Recently many of them have assimilated to neighbouring Nandi, leading to a decline in the use of the Terik language in favor of Nandi. The Terik people are a Kalenjin tribe inhabiting parts of the Kakamega and Nandi Districts of western Kenya, numbering about 120 000 people. ... In Hinduism, Nandi is the white bull which Shiva rides, and the leader of the Ganas. ... The Luo are a people of Western Kenya, Central-Northern Uganda, Southern Sudan and Tanzania. ... Terik may refer to: The Terik language The Terik people This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

References

• Heine, Bernd (1992) 'Dialect death: the case of Terik', in Brenzinger (ed.) Language Death — Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 255–272.
• Roeder, Hilke (1986) Sprachlicher Wandel und Gruppenbewusstsein bei den Terik. (Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, Beiheft 7). Hamburg: Helmut Buske.
• Rottland, Franz (1982) Die Südnilotischen Sprachen: Beschreibung, Vergleichung und Rekonstruktion (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik vol. 7). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

External link

• The Elgon languages on Ethnologue.