Bari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Bari is spoken by several distinct tribes: the Bari people themselves, the Pojulu, Kakwa, Nyangwara, Mundari, and Kuku. Each has its own dialect. The language is therefore sometimes called Karo or Kutuk ('mother tongue') rather than Bari.

Bari is a tone language. It has vowel harmony, subject–verb–object word order, and agglutinative verbal morphology with some suppletion. A very competent dictionary and grammar were published in the 1930s, but are very difficult to find today. More recently, a dissertation has been published on Bari tonal phonology, and another dissertation on Bari syntax is available.

Dialects

Dialects are:

• Bari proper (Beri)
• Pöjulu (Pajulu, Fadjulu, Fajelu, Madi)
• Kakwa (Kakua, Kwakwak) [radio broadcasts in Uganda]
• Nyangbara (Nyangwara, Nyambara)
• Mandari (Mondari, Mundari, Chir, Kir, Shir)
• Kuku
• Nyepu (Nyefu, Nyepo, Nypho, Ngyepu)
• Ligo (Liggo)

Phonology

Consonants

• /ɟ/ may also be heard as an affricate [dʒ] in free variation.
• /l/ can be heard as a flap [ɾ] when in between /u/.

Vowels

Bari and their kin, Kakwa have a cross-height^{[clarification needed]} vowel-harmony system.^[2][3]

Orthography

The Bari alphabet is used by the Bari, Kakwa, Pojulu, and Kuku in South Sudan. There are four digraphs, ʼB, ʼD, ʼY and Ny, and the letter eng, Ŋ.