Maasai belongs to the southern Maa Group of Eastern Nilotic. It is spoken by the Maasai on the southern side of the Nairobi-Mombasa Road, in Kajaido, Narok, and Eastern districts in Kenya, and also west of Mount Kilimanjaro along the border in Tanzania.
The 1979 Kenya census lists 241,000 with a "tribal affiliation" of Maasai. UBS (1982) suggests 375,000 speakers (in Kenya), while Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) list 190,000. Grimes (1996) gives a figure of 883,000 for all countries.
Maasai is an important regional language.
There is a standard Maasai orthography.
One set of learning materials will be sufficient for Maasai.
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