Obanliku (Banliku, Abanliku) is a
Bendi language of
Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, ...
. There are five dialects or varieties: Bisu, Busi, Bishiri, Basang and Bebi.
In a 2011 survey, it was found that the Bisu, Busi, Bishiri and Bebi dialects share above 75%
lexical similarity
In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...
and are
mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
, but the
southwestern
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each ...
Basang dialect had less than 75%, causing some difficulty for speakers of the other
dialects. Basang speakers could understand the other dialects, however. Additionally, all Obanliku speakers have some understanding of the neighbouring
Bete-Bendi language, mainly through learning it at the market;
the Obanliku and Bete-Bendi languages also had an average of 70%
lexical similarity
In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. ...
.
References
Bendi languages
Languages of Nigeria
{{Bantoid-lang-stub