The five Tarokoid languages are a branch of the
Plateau family spoken in central
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, ...
, just north of the middle reaches of the
Benue River
Benue River (), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is a major tributary of the Niger River. The size of its catchment basin is 319,000 km2 (123,000 sq mi). Almost its entire length of Approximation, approximately is navigable dur ...
.
Tarok itself has 300,000 speakers, with
Pe and
Sur about 5,000 each.
Yangkam is severely endangered, being spoken by around fifty elderly men.
The Tarokoid languages have significantly influenced the
Ron languages
The Ron, Ronic or Ron–Fyer languages, group A.4 of the West Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, are spoken in Plateau State, north-central Nigeria.
The Ron languages have undergone extensive influence from Tarok.
Languages
T ...
and later
Ngas, but not the other
West Chadic languages
The West Chadic languages of the Afroasiatic languages, Afro-Asiatic family are spoken principally in Niger and Nigeria. They include Hausa language, Hausa, the most populous Chadic languages, Chadic language and a major language of West Afr ...
of
Tel
TEL or Tel may refer to:
Businesses and organisations
* Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer
* TE Connectivity, a technology company, NYSE stock ticker TEL
* The European Library, an Internet service
Place names
* Tel, Azerbaij ...
,
Goemai,
Mupun, and
Mwaghavul. Most borrowed words went from Tarok to Chadic, although occasionally Chadic words were also borrowed into Tarok. Today,
Tarok remains the
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...
of the southern Plateau region of Nigeria.
Classification
The only language with significant data is
Tarok.
Pe (Pai) has been placed in various branches of Plateau, and
Kwang (Kwanka) was only recently added, but it now seems clear that the following five languages belong together. The classification below follows Blench (2004).
[Blench, Roger. 2004]
Tarok and related languages of east-central Nigeria
Names and locations
Below is a list of Tarokoid language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).
Reconstruction
Reconstructed Proto-Tarokoid forms proposed by Longtau (2016):
Footnotes
References
*Blench (2008
''Prospecting proto-Plateau'' Manuscript.
External links
from Roger Blench
{{Platoid languages
Plateau languages