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.

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.[2]

Blench (2019) also lists Ekin as an Ejagham dialect.[3]

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Post-alv./
Palatal 		Velar Labio-
velar
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Plosive/
Affricate 		voiceless p t t͡ʃ k k͡p
voiced b d d͡ʒ ɡ ɡ͡b
Fricative voiceless f s
voiced (β) (ɣ)
Tap ɾ
Approximant j w
  • Stop sounds /b, ɡ/ are lenited to fricatives [β, ɣ] when in intervocalic positions.
  • Velar sounds [k, ɡ; (ɣ)] can be heard as uvular [q, (ʁ)] when in syllable-final position.[4]

Vowels

Front Central Back
Close i ʉ[a] u
Close-mid e[b] ə o[b]
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a
  1. ^ Occurs as unrounded /ɨ/ in the eastern Ejagham dialect. Does not occur in the southern dialect.
  2. ^ a b Only occurs in the southern Ejagham dialect.

Writing system

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

Western Jagham alphabet[5]
a b bh ch d e ə f g gb gh i j k kp m n ny ŋ o p r s t u ʉ w y

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

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

References

  1. ^ Ekoi at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Blench, Roger. "Ekoid: Bantoid languages of the Nigeria-Cameroun borderland" (PDF). p. 1.
  3. ^ Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
  4. ^ Watters, John R. (1981). A Phonology and Morphology of Ejagham- with notes on Dialect Variation. Los Angeles: University of California at Los Angeles.
  5. ^ Tadadjeu 1993, p. 73.

Works cited

  • Tadadjeu, Maurice (1993). "Cameroun". In Rhonda L. Hartell (ed.). Alphabets des langues africaines. Dakar: Unesco et Société internationale de linguistique.
Allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekin_language
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