Ijoide languages

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The ijoid languages form a primary branch of the Niger-Congo and are a small family of around 10 languages ​​spoken by around 1.7 million people in the Niger Delta in Nigeria .

It consists in part of the Defaka that only 200 speaker has, on the other hand from the Ijo - dialect continuum . In addition to the actual Ijo (also Ijaw or Izon) with a million speakers, these include the Kalabari and Kirike , each with 250,000 speakers, and six other small languages.

Classification of the Ijoid

Classification of the ijoid languages ​​according to Nurse 2000

  • Ijoid
    • Ijo
      • Central: Izon (Central West Ijo) (1 million); Biseni (5 thousand), Okodia (4 thousand), Oruma (5 thousand)
      • east
        • Nkoro: Nkoro (5 thousand)
        • Kalabari-Okrika: Kalabari (250 thousand), Kirike (250 thousand), Ibani (60 thousand)
        • Southeast: Nembe-Akassa (70 thousand)
    • Defaka : Defaka (Afakani) (200)

The ijoid languages ​​are closely related to one another and - apart from the Defaka - form a dialect continuum .

Linguistic properties

The ijoid languages ​​differ significantly from other Niger-Congo languages ​​in several features. The system of nominal classes has only survived in remnants; new class suffixes were created for “human beings” . The pronouns have developed a pleasure system (masculine, feminine, partly neuter), which is otherwise completely unusual for Niger-Congo languages. As with the Mande languages and the Dogon, the sentence order is SOV (subject-object-verb), while otherwise SVO is preferred in Niger-Congo (see Claudi 1993).

further reading

African languages

  • Joseph Greenberg: The Languages ​​of Africa. Mouton, The Hague and Indiana University Center, Bloomington 1963.
  • Bernd Heine and others (ed.): The languages ​​of Africa. Buske, Hamburg 1981.
  • Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse (eds.): African Languages. An Introduction. Cambridge University Press 2000.

Especially for the Ijoid

  • John Bendor-Samuel (Ed.): The Niger-Congo Languages: A Classification and Description of Africa's Largest Language Family. University Press of America, Lanham, New York, London 1989.
    Therein: Charles EW Jenewari: Ijoid.
  • Jenewari, Charles EW: Defaka, Ijo's Closest Linguistic Relative. In: Ivan R. Dihoff (Ed.): Current Approaches to African Linguistics. Vol 1. 85-111., 1983.

Web links