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Niger-Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages, and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majority of consonants are oral consonants. Examples of nasals in English are, and, in words such as nose, bring and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages. There are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages.
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel /ɑ̃/ (help·info) or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.
Defaka is an endangered and divergent Nigerian language of uncertain classification. It is spoken in the Opobo–Nkoro LGA of Rivers State, in the Defaka or Afakani ward of Nkọrọ town and Ịwọma Nkọrọ. The low number of Defaka speakers, coupled with the fact that other languages dominate the region where Defaka is spoken, edges the language near extinction on a year-to-year basis. It is generally classified in an Ijoid branch of the Niger–Congo family. However, the Ijoid proposal is problematic. Blench (2012) notes that "Defaka has numerous external cognates and might be an isolate or independent branch of Niger–Congo which has come under Ịjọ influence."
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The Yele language, or Yélî Dnye, is the language of Rossel Island, the easternmost island in the Louisiade Archipelago off the eastern tip of Papua New Guinea. There were some 4,000 speakers in 1998, comprising the entire ethnic population. The language remains unclassified by linguists.
Ikwerre, can also be spelt as Ikwere, is a type of Igboid language spoken primarily by the Ikwerre people who inhabit certain areas of Rivers State, Nigeria.
Shompen, or Shom Peng is a language or group of languages spoken on Great Nicobar Island in the Indian union territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in the Indian Ocean, northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia.
Ndrumbea, variously spelled Ndumbea, Dubea, Drubea and Païta, is a New Caledonian language that gave its name to the capital of New Caledonia, Nouméa, and the neighboring town of Dumbéa. It has been displaced to villages outside the capital, with fewer than a thousand speakers remaining. Gordon (1995) estimates that there may only be two or three hundred. The Dubea are the people; the language has been called Naa Dubea "language of Dubea".
The Jukunoid languages are a branch of the Benue-Congo languages spoken by the Jukun and related peoples of Nigeria and Cameroon. They are distributed mostly throughout Taraba State, Nigeria and surrounding regions.
Wukari is a Local Government Area in Taraba State, Nigeria. Its headquarters is in the town of Wukari on the A4 highway. The Donga River flows through the area and the Benue River forms a boundary with Nasarawa State to the northwest. It has an area of 4,308 km2 and a population of 241,546 at the 2006 census. The postal code of the area is 670.
Kensiu (Kensiw) is an Austro-Asiatic language of the Jahaic subbranch. It is spoken by a small community of 300 in Yala Province in southern Thailand and also reportedly by a community of approximately 300 speakers in Western Malaysia in Perak and Kedah States. Speakers of this language are Negritos who are known as the Mani people or Maniq of Thailand.
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Jibu is a Jukunoid language spoken in the Taraba State of Nigeria by 30,000 people.
Kuteb also known as Ati, Kutev, Mbarike, Zumper is a Nigerian ethnic language. The Kuteb people mostly live in the southern part of Taraba state in 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.
Jukun may refer to:
Jukun (Njikun), or more precisely Jukun Takum, is a Jukunoid language of Cameroon used as a trade language in Nigeria. Though there are only a few thousand native speakers, and only a dozen in Nigeria, it is spoken as a second language in Nigeria by tens of thousands.
Hõne is a Jukunoid language spoken in Gombe State and Taraba State, Nigeria. Speakers of the two dialects, Pindiga and Gwana, can only understand each other with difficulty. It belongs to the Jukun Wapan (Kororofa) language cluster.
Wannu, or Abinsi after the district in which it is spoken, is a Jukunoid language of Nigeria. It belongs to the Jukun Wapan (Kororofa) language cluster.
References
- ↑ Wapan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- 1 2 Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
- ↑ Larry Hyman, 1975. "Nasal states and nasal processes." In Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, pp. 249–264