The Jagham language, ''Ejagham'', also known as Ekoi, is an
Ekoid language
The Ekoid languages are a dialect cluster of Southern Bantoid languages spoken principally in southeastern Nigeria and in adjacent regions of Cameroon. They have long been associated with the Bantu languages, without their status being precisely ...
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.
Writing System
A Jagham alphabet was developed by John R. Watters and Kathie Watters in 1981.
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.
Blench (2019) also lists Ekin as an Ejagham dialect.
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.
('N' stands for a
homorganic
In phonetics, a homorganic consonant (from ''homo-'' "same" and ''organ'' "(speech) organ") is a consonant sound that is articulated in the same place of articulation as another. For example, , and are homorganic consonants of one another since ...
nasal. 'j' is "y".)
References
External links
Ejagham basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
Ekoid languages
Languages of Nigeria
Languages of Cameroon
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