Jagham language

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

Ekoi
Ejagham
Native to	Nigeria, Cameroon
Ethnicity	Ekoi people
Native speakers	(120,000 cited 2000)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Volta-Congo Benue–Congo Bantoid Southern Bantoid Ekoid–Mbe Ekoid Ekoi
Dialects	Akin Bendeghe Northern Etung Southern Etung Ekwe Akamkpa-Ejagham Keaka Obang Nkim Nkum Ekajuk
Writing system	Nsibidi, Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-3	etu
Glottolog	ejag1239
Ejagham

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. 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.

External links

• Ejagham basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database