Native to Nigeria Native speakers 1 million (1999) ISO 639-2 bin | Region Edo State Writing system Latin script | |
Language family Niger–Congo
Atlantic–Congo
Volta–Niger
YEAI
Edoid
North Central
Edo–Esan–Ora
Edo | ||
Edo /ˈɛdoʊ/ (with diacritics, Ẹ̀dó; also called Bini (Benin)) is a Volta–Niger language spoken primarily in Edo State, Nigeria. It was and remains the primary language of the Edo people of Igodomigodo. The Igodomigodo kingdom was renamed Edo by Oba Eweka, after which the Edos refer to themselves as Oviedo 'child of Edo'. The Edo capital was Ubinu, known as Benin City to the Portuguese who first heard about it from the coastal Itsekiri, who pronounced it this way; from this the kingdom came to be known as the Benin Empire in the West.
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Phonology
Edo has a rather average consonant inventory for an Edoid language. It maintains only a single phonemic nasal, /m/, but has 13 oral consonants, /ɺ, l, ʋ, j, w/ and the 8 stops, which have nasal allophones such as [n, ɲ, ŋʷ] before nasal vowels. There are seven vowels, /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/, all of which may be long or nasal, and three tones. Syllable structure is simple, being maximally CVV, where VV is either a long vowel or /i, u/ plus a different oral or nasal vowel.
The three rhotics have been described as voiced and voiceless trills plus a lax English-type approximant. However, Ladefoged found all three to be approximants, with the voiced–voiceless pair being raised (without being fricatives) and perhaps at a slightly different place of articulation compared to the third, but not trills.
The Edo alphabet has separate letters for the nasalized allophones of /ʋ/ and /l/, mw and n:
Long vowels are written by doubling the letter. Nasal vowels may be written with a final -n or with an initial nasal consonant. Tone may be written with acute accent, grave accent, and unmarked, or with a final -h (-nh with a nasal vowel).
Edo Wikipedia
Wikipedia currently does not have an Edo language version. An Edo Wikipedia site is currently in process of preconception ("incubation") (see https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/bin for details). Edo speakers can assist in the creation of the Edo Wikipedia (see how on https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/bin).