Lafofa, also Tegem–Amira, is a

dialect cluster A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...

spoken in the southern Nuba Mountains in the south of

Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...

. Blench (2010) considers the Tegem and Amira varieties to be distinct languages; as Lafofa is poorly attested, there may be others. Greenberg (1950) classified Lafofa as one of the

Talodi languages Talodi () is a small town in the Nuba Mountains, and a district of South Kordofan, South Kordofan state, in southern Sudan. The town is nearly 650 km (406 miles) southwest of Khartoum. Its name is from the Talodi people of the area who spea ...

, albeit a divergent one, but without much evidence. More recently this position has been abandoned, and Lafofa is left unclassified within Niger–Congo. Norton (2016) tentatively finds Lafofa to be closest to the

Ijoid languages Ijoid is a proposed but undemonstrated group of languages linking the Ijaw languages (Ịjọ) with the endangered Defaka language. The similarities, however, may be due to Ijaw influence on Defaka. The Ijoid languages, or perhaps just Ijaw, a ...

.Russell Norton, 'Lafofa: a distant Ijoid-related language'. CLAN 2016 It is considered a language isolate by Glottolog. Unlike the neighbouring Talodi-Heiban languages which have

SVO word order SVO may refer to: * Association football clubs in Germany: ** SVO Germaringen ** SV Oberachern * Silver vanadium oxide battery (SVO battery) * San Jose Chamber of Commerce, a chamber of commerce in San Jose, California, United States, known as th ...

, the Lafofa languages have

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station code for Southend Victoria rail ...

References

*Roger Blench, 2011 (ms), "Does Kordofanian constitute a group and if not, where does its languages fit into Niger-Congo

*Roger Blench, 2011 (ms), "Tegem–Amira: a previously unrecognised subgroup of Niger–Cong

Lafofa languages, Kordofanian languages Language families Severely endangered languages {{Kordofanian-lang-stub

See also

References