Nilo-Hamitic is an outdated label from early twentieth-century linguistics, once used for a set of East African languages thought to blend Nilotic and so-called Hamitic elements. The theory behind it collapsed, and the languages it covered, including Maasai, Turkana, Karamojong and the Kalenjin varieties of Kenya, are now classified simply as Eastern and Southern Nilotic, part of the Nilotic group within the Nilo-Saharan family. These languages are spoken across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and South Sudan, mostly by traditionally pastoralist communities, and several have speaker populations running from the hundreds of thousands into the millions; Maasai alone is commonly estimated at around a million. Where written, they use the Latin alphabet. Modern reference works use Nilotic rather than Nilo-Hamitic.
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