Ekoi
Ejagham
Native toNigeria, Cameroon
EthnicityEkoi people
Native speakers
120,000 (2000)[1]
Dialects
  • Akin
  • Bendeghe
  • Northern Etung
  • Southern Etung
  • Ekwe
  • Akamkpa-Ejagham
  • Keaka
  • Obang
  • Nkim
  • Nkum
  • Ekajuk
Nsibidi Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3etu
Glottologejag1239

The Jagham language, Ejagham, also known as Ekoi, is an Ekoid language of Nigeria and Cameroon spoken by the Ekoi people. The E- in Ejagham represents the class prefix for "language", analogous to the Bantu ki- in KiSwahili

The Ekoi are one of several peoples who use Nsibidi ideographs, and may be the ones that created them.

Writing System

A Jagham alphabet was developed by John R. Watters and Kathie Watters in 1981.

Western Jagham alphabet[2]
abbhchd eəfggb ghijkkp mnnyŋo prstu ʉwy

Dialects

Ekoi is dialectally diverse. The dialects of Ejagham are divided into Western and Eastern groups:

  • Western varieties include Bendeghe, Northern and Southern Etung, Ekwe and Akamkpa-Ejagham;
  • Eastern varieties include Keaka and Obang.[3]

Blench (2019) also lists Ekin as an Ejagham dialect.[4]

Morphology

Ekoi has the following noun classes, listed here with their Bantu equivalents. Watters (1981) says there are fewer than in Bantu because of mergers (class 4 into 3, 7 into 6, etc.), though Blench notes that there is no reason to think that the common ancestral language had as many noun classes as proto-Bantu.

Noun classPrefixConcord
1N-w, ɲ
2a-b
3N-m
5ɛ-j
6a-m
8bi-b
9N-j, ɲ
14ɔ-b
19i-f

('N' stands for a homorganic nasal. 'j' is "y".)

References

  1. Ekoi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Tadadjeu 1993, p. 73.
  3. Blench, Roger. "Ekoid: Bantoid languages of the Nigeria-Cameroun borderland" (PDF). p. 1.
  4. Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.

Works cited

  • Tadadjeu, Maurice (1993). "Cameroun". In Rhonda L. Hartell (ed.). Alphabets des langues africaines. Dakar: Unesco et Société internationale de linguistique.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.