Ekin_language

Jagham language

Jagham language

Ekoid language of Nigeria and Cameroon

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

Quick Facts Ekoi, Native to ...

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.

More information Noun class, Prefix ...

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

References

  1. [1]
    Ekoi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. [2]
    Tadadjeu 1993, p. 73.
  3. [3]
    Blench, Roger. "Ekoid: Bantoid languages of the Nigeria-Cameroun borderland" (PDF). p. 1.
  4. [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.
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