Dholuo is a Western Nilotic language spoken by the Luo people of Nyanza, the lake basin, and diaspora communities across East Africa — approximately 5 million native speakers in Kenya per the 2019 census, with additional speakers in Tanzania's Mara Region. It is a tonal language with four tones (high, low, falling, and rising) that operate at both lexical and grammatical levels, and has a canonical Subject-Verb-Object word order. Its oral tradition includes pakruok (praise poetry), the epic of Lwanda Magere — a legendary warrior of the Sidho clan whose story of invincibility and betrayal is one of the most celebrated oral narratives in East Africa — funeral laments (wer), and a large body of proverbs. Regional dialectal variation distinguishes principally two documented varieties: Trans-Yala Luo, spoken in Central Nyanza (including the Kisumu area), and South Nyanza Luo, spoken across South Nyanza and parts of Central Nyanza.