Nyaturu

Nyaturu (Kirimi, autonymously Kinyaturu) is a Bantu language of the Tanzania Central Bantu group (Glottolog F32), spoken by approximately 570,000 people in the Singida Region of central Tanzania, around the town of Singida (the regional capital and Nyaturu cultural center). The Nyaturu people are traditionally semi-nomadic cattle pastoralists and millet-sorghum agriculturalists of the central Tanzanian semi-arid plateau, sharing Lake Eyasi/Singida cluster F30 features with sister languages Langi (lag, F33) and more distantly with Nyamwezi (nym, F22). Linguistically, Nyaturu has typical Eastern Bantu features (16+ noun classes, complex verbal morphology with subject-object-tense-aspect agreement, two-tone register system), with Olson's 1964 SIL phonological description as the major modern documentation. The community has shifted significantly to Swahili in education and urban contexts but retains Nyaturu as the dominant home language in rural villages.