Native speakers 120,000 (2000) ISO 639-3 etu | Ethnicity Ekoi people | |
Language family Niger–CongoAtlantic–CongoBenue–CongoSouthern BantoidEkoid–MbeEkoidEkoi | ||
The Jagham language, Ejagham, also known as Ekoi, is an Ekoid (Niger–Congo) language of Nigeria and Cameroon.
Ekoi is dialectically diverse. Western varieties include Etung and Bendeghe; eastern Keaka and Obang.
The Ekoi are one of several peoples who use nsibidi ideographs, and may be the ones that created them.
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".)
References
Jagham language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA