Related Research Articles
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with phoneme. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific; and as many as seventy percent of world languages are tonal. Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese are amongst the most well-known tonal languages used today; however, the languages with the most tones are found in West Africa and the Americas.
Dida is a dialect cluster of the Kru family spoken in Ivory Coast.
Sandawe is a language spoken by about 60,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma Region of Tanzania. Sandawe's use of click consonants, a rare feature shared with only two other language of East Africa – Hadza and Dahalo, had been the basis of its classification as a member of the defunct Khoisan family of Southern Africa since Albert Drexel in the 1920s. Recent investigations however suggest that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe family regardless of the validity of Khoisan as a whole. A discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).
The forty or so Plateau languages are a tentative group of Benue–Congo languages spoken by 15 million people on the Jos Plateau Southern Kaduna, Nassarawa State and in adjacent areas in central Nigeria.
Iau or Turu is a Lakes Plain language of West Papua, Indonesia, spoken by about 600 people. Most speakers are monolingual, and their number is growing. Other peoples in the western Lakes Plain area speak basic Iau. Iau is heavily tonal, with 11 tones on nouns and 19 simple and compound tones on verbs.
Lagwan (Logone) is a Chadic language spoken in northern Cameroon and southwestern Chad. Dialects include Logone-Birni and Logone-Gana.
Ngambay is one of the major languages spoken by Sara people in southwestern Chad, northeastern Cameroon and eastern Nigeria, with about a million native speakers. Ngambay is the most widely spoken of the Sara languages, and is used as a trade language between speakers of other dialects.
Izi is an Igboid language spoken in Ebonyi state in Nigeria. It forms a dialect cluster with closely related Ikwo, Ezza, and Mgbo.
The Baale language, Baleesi or Baalesi, is a Surmic language spoken in Ethiopia and South Sudan by the Baale or Zilmamo people of Ethiopia, and by the Kachepo of South Sudan. It is a member of the Surmic cluster; the self-name of the language and the community is Suri, which is the same as that of the Suri language, evoking an ethnonym that embraces the Tirma, Chai, and Baale communities, although linguistically the languages of these communities are different. There are currently 9,000 native speakers of Baleesi, 5,000 in South Sudan and 4,100 in Ethiopia; almost all of these are monolingual.
Jaba is a Local Government Area in southern Kaduna State, Nigeria. It covers an area of 531 km2. It is located close to the Jos Plateau region and Abuja in the central part of Nigeria in West Africa. The local government capital is in the town of Kwoi. The postal code of the area is 801.
Nyong (Daganyonga), also known as Mubako and Bali-Kumbat, is a Leko language spoken in two well-separated enclaves in Cameroon and Nigeria. Cameroonian speakers consider themselves to be ethnically Chamba.
Afenmai (Afemai), or Yekhee, is an Edoid language spoken in Edo State, Nigeria by Afenmai people. Not all speakers recognize the name "Yekhee"; some use the district name Etsako.
Ahwai, also called the Ndunic languages, is a Plateau language cluster spoken to the southwest of Fadan Karshi in Sanga LGA, Kaduna State, Nigeria. Most villages are located at the foot of the Ahwai Mountains in Kaduna State.
Berom or Birom is the most widely spoken Plateau language in Nigeria. The language is locally numerically important and is consistently spoken by Berom of all ages in rural areas. However, the Berom are shifting to Hausa in cities. The small Cen and Nincut dialects may be separate languages. Approximately 1 million (2010) people speak in this language.
Hyam is a regionally important linguistic cluster of Plateau languages in Nigeria. Hyam of Nok is the prestige dialect. Writing the sociolinguistics of Hyam, Blench treats Sait, and Dzar as distinct varieties, and notes that Yat and Ankung may be viewed as separate languages, however, Hayab (2016) presents a differing opinion arguing that it is Ankung, a language called Iduya, that is not mutually intelligible to Hyam. Meanwhile, Hyam, which is spoken by the Ham people of Nigeria, popularly known as 'Jaba' in a recent study by Philip Hayab, a native of the area and a linguist who carried out in-depth research into the language, reveals that 'Jaba' has a Hausa etymology and is derogatory and should be discarded.
Kuteb is a Nigerian ethnic group. They live mostly in Southern part of Taraba state of Nigeria, with a thousand-or-so speakers across the border in Cameroon. In Nigeria, it is spoken mostly in Takum and Ussa LGAs, and Yangtu SDA Taraba State.
The Kamuku languages are a branch of the Kainji languages spoken by the Kamuku people of Niger State, western Nigeria, mostly in Mariga and Rafi LGAs.
Yebu is one of the Savanna languages of Kaltungo LGA in Gombe State, northeastern Nigeria.
The Ersu language proper is a Qiangic language spoken in western Sichuan, China. It is the most widely spoken of the three Ersu languages. There are 13,000 speakers according to Sun (1982).
Southern Kaduna is an area inhabited by various non-Hausa peoples, South of Zaria Emirate of Kaduna State. It is located in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. Southern Kaduna consist of 12 local Government out of Kaduna State 23 Local Government. Some view it as being less of a geographical identity and more of an ethnic identity concept.
References
- 1 2 3 Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020. A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry] Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria . SIL Electronic Survey Reports.