Language
Jagham language
From Wikipedia
The Jagham language, Ejagham, also known as Ekoi, is an Ekoid language of Nigeria and Cameroon spoken by the Ekoi people. The E- in Ejagham represents the class prefix for "language", analogous to the Bantu ki- in KiSwahili
The Ekoi are one of several peoples who use Nsibidi ideographs, and may be the ones that created them.
Dialects
Ekoi is dialectally diverse. The dialects of Ejagham are divided into Western and Eastern groups:
Western varieties include Bendeghe, Northern and Southern Etung, Ekwe and Akamkpa-Ejagham;
Eastern varieties include Keaka and Obang.
Blench (2019) also lists Ekin as an Ejagham dialect.
Phonology
Consonants
Stop sounds /b, ɡ/ are lenited to fricatives [β, ɣ] when in intervocalic positions.
Velar sounds [k, ɡ; (ɣ)] can be heard as uvular [q, (ʁ)] when in syllable-final position.
Writing system
A Jagham alphabet was developed by John R. Watters and Kathie Watters in 1981.
Morphology
Ekoi has the following noun classes, listed here with their Bantu equivalents. Watters (1981) says there are fewer than in Bantu because of mergers (class 4 into 3, 7 into 6, etc.), though Blench notes that there is no reason to think that the common ancestral language had as many noun classes as proto-Bantu.
('N' stands for a homorganic nasal. 'j' is "y".)
This record is provisional: it was compiled from the cited sources but has not yet been checked by an InsideKamer editor.
Sources
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