Oko (ɔ̀kɔ́), also known as Ogori-Magongo and Oko-Eni-Osayin, 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

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, ...

. It appears to form a branch of the "Nupe–Oko–Idoma" () group of

Niger–Congo languages Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups ...

. The language is spoken in and around the towns of Ogori and Magongo in southwestern

Kogi State Kogi State is a States of Nigeria, state in the North Central Nigeria, North Central region of Nigeria, bordered to the west by the states of Ekiti State, Ekiti and Kwara State, Kwara, to the north by the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria, Fe ...

and

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

state borders.

Classification

Oko is one of the

Volta–Niger languages The Volta–Niger family of languages, also known as West Benue–Congo or East Kwa, is one of the branches of the Niger–Congo language family, with perhaps 70 million speakers. Among these are the most important languages of southern Nigeria ...

. An automated computational analysis (

ASJP The Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) is a collaborative project applying computational approaches to comparative linguistics using a database of word lists. The database is open access and consists of 40-item basic-vocabulary lists f ...

4) by Müller et al. (2013) grouped Oko within the

Idomoid languages The Idomoid languages are spoken primarily in Benue State of east-central Nigeria and surrounding regions. Idoma itself is an official language spoken by nearly four million people including the subgroups of Igede, Uffia, Otukpo, and Orokam. La ...

.Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013.
ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013)
'.

Geographical distribution

According to ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensive catalogue of languages. It w ...

'', Oko is spoken in: *

Edo State Edo State, Edo, officially known as Edo State, is a States of Nigeria, state in the South South, South-South Geopolitical zones of Nigeria, geopolitical zone of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. As of 2024, the state was ranked as the List of Ni ...

Akoko-Edo Akoko Edo is a Local Government Area in Edo State, Nigeria. Its headquarters is in the town of Igarra. It has an area of 1,371 km and a population of 262,110 at the 2006 census. It consists of the Akoko people, who are split between Ondo an ...

LGA *

Okene Okene is a town in the Nigerian state of Kogi. The town is based in a Local Government Area of the same name. Okene runs along the A2 highway. It had an area of 328 km2 and a population of 320,260 at the 2006 census. The predominant peo ...

LGA, Magongo, and Ogori towns

Varieties

Oko is a dialect cluster consisting of (''Ethnologue''): *Oko (Ogori, Uku) *Osayin(Magongo, Osanyin) *Eni Below is a list of Ọkọ–Eni–Ọsayin language cluster names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Each vowel also has a

nasal Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination: * With reference to the human nose: ** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery * ...

equivalent.

References

{{Niger-Congo branches Volta–Niger languages