Eton, or Ìtón, is a
Bantu language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu language, Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀), or Ntu languages are a language family of about 600 languages of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern, East Africa, Eastern and Southeast Africa, South ...
spoken by the
Eton people of
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
.
[Velde, Mark L. O. Van de. ''A Grammar of Eton'', p. 3]
It is mutually intelligible with
Ewondo, a fact which may have delayed its study for some time.
Eton speakers inhabit the
Lekié department of the
Centre Region of Cameroon, an area north of the capital
Yaoundé
Yaoundé (; , ) is the Capital city, capital city of Cameroon. It has a population of more than 2.8 million which makes it the second-largest city in the country after the port city Douala. It lies in the Centre Region (Cameroon), Centre Region o ...
bounded in the north by the
Sanaga River.
Ethnologue cites four dialects of Eton, but its speakers generally distinguish two, a northern and a southern dialect, the latter of which is closer to the Ewondo language.
The
Mengisa people have largely switched to Eton. A small number continue to speak their ancestral language,
Leti. It is not clear if the ISO code for "Mengisa" refers to Eton or Leti; ''Ethnologue'' classifies Mengisa with Eton, but the code is likely based on Guthrie, who classified it with Leti.
[Hammarström (2015) Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: a comprehensive review: online appendices]
Phonology
Eton is a
tone language. It makes use of three tones (low, high and dissimilating high) and
floating tones.
Grammar
Eton is an
SVO language. As is common in Bantu, Eton has a
noun class
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some ...
system. There are twelve classes and the class of a noun determines which agreement prefix it receives and triggers. For instance, verbs agree with the subject's noun class.
References
*Velde, Mark L. O. Van de. ''A Grammar of Eton'', Mouton de Gruyter, 2008.
External links
*Velde, Mark L. O. Van de. (PDF
A Description of Eton: Phonology, morphology, basic syntax and lexicon Available through the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries.
In addition to its main camp ...
website.
*Materials on Eton are included in the open access
Arthur Capell
Arthur Capell (28 March 1902 – 10 August 1986) was an Australian linguist, who made major contributions to the study of Australian languages, Austronesian languages and Papuan languages.
Early life
Capell was born in Newtown, New South W ...
collection
AC2 held by
Paradisec.
Beti languages
Languages of Cameroon
{{Bantu-lang-stub