Tenet people

The Tennet people ('Tenet' in early language survey) are an ethnic group in South Sudan. Their language is also called Tennet. Their neighbors, the Lopit, refer to them as Irenge. In many respects, the Tennet culture resembles that of the Lopit, and most Tennet people can also speak Lopit, but they have maintained a strong ethnic identity, and among themselves they continue to speak Tennet.

The Tennet home area consists of five villages at the northern end of the Lopit Mountains, north of Torit in Eastern Equatoria state. Four of the villages are entirely Tennet, but the fifth is part Tennet and part Lopit. In 1994, the Tennet population was estimated at about 4,000 people.

The Tennet have an account of how they were once part of a larger group, which also included what are now Murle, Didinga, and Boya, the other members of the Southwest Surmic language family. Members of a hunting party speared an oribi, but after cooking it, they drank the broth themselves instead of giving it to the elders according to custom. A disagreement arose, and in the end, they separated, splitting into four smaller groups. The other three groups have similar stories. Some estimates place this event in the early nineteenth century.

The Tennet learned iron-working from the Lopit. However, during Sudan's civil wars, blacksmith activity decreased.

Tennet is a Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic, Surmic language. It has several of the features common in other Surmic languages: Implosive consonants, multiple strategies for marking number on nouns, a marked nominative case system, and VSO order but sentence-final question words.

...
Wikipedia