Ogoni
Kegboid
EthnicityOgoni people
Geographic
distribution
SE Nigeria
Linguistic classificationNiger–Congo?
Subdivisions
  • East
  • West
Glottologogon1240

The Ogoni languages, or Kegboid languages, are the five languages of the Ogoni people of Rivers State, Nigeria.

They fall into two clusters, East and West, with a limited degree of mutual intelligibility between members of each cluster. The Ogoni think of the cluster members as separate languages, however.

The classification of the Ogoni languages is as follows:

  • East: Khana and Tẹẹ, with around 1,800,000 speakers between them, and Gokana, with about 250,000.
  • West: Eleme, with about 90,000 speakers, and Baan, with around 50,500.

Names and locations

Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).[1]


LanguageBranchDialectsAlternate spellingsOwn name for languageEndonym(s)Other names (location-based)Other names for languageExonym(s)SpeakersLocation(s)
GokanaKegboid54,000 (1973 SIL)Rivers State, Gokana–Tai–Eleme LGA
KhanaKegboidYeghe, Nyokhana, Ken–Khana, Boúe, KaaKhanaOgoni (ethnic and political term includes Gokana)76,713 (1926 Talbot);[2] 90,000 (SIL)Rivers State, Khana/Oyigbo and Gokana–Tai–Eleme LGAs
ElemeWest55,000 (1987 UBS)Rivers State, Gokana–Tai–Eleme LGA
TẹẹWestTaiTèẹ̀ ̣Tèẹ̀ ̣313,000 (2006)Rivers State, Tèẹ̀ ̣Local Government Area (TALGA)
BaanKa-Ban, KesariBan–OgoiGoi, OgoiFewer than 5,000 (1990)Rivers State, Gokana–Tai–Eleme LGA, Ban–Ogoi plus villages

See also

References

  1. Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
  2. Talbot, P. Amaury 1926. The peoples of Southern Nigeria. A sketch of the history, ethnology and languages with an abstract of the 1923 census. 4 vols. London.

 This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 3.0 license.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.