Native to Nigeria ISO 639-3 juk | Native speakers 100,000 (1994) Glottolog wapa1235 | |
Region Taraba State, Plateau State, Nassarawa State Language family Niger–Congo
Atlantic–Congo
Benue–Congo
Jukunoid
Central
Kororofa
Wapan |
Wapan or Jukun Wapan, also known as Wukari after the local town, is a major Jukunoid language of Nigeria.
Wapan and other Jukunoid languages are interesting in the development of asymmetrical patterns of nasal and oral consonants in West Africa.
One could posit that voiced oral stops become nasal before nasal vowels, sometimes at the expense of having more nasal than oral vowels, which is typologically odd, or that nasal stops denasalise before oral vowels, which is typologically odd as well.
Oral vowels are allowed only in syllables like ba, mba, nasal vowels in bã, mã.
Historically, however, the consonants nasalized: *mb became **mm before nasal vowels and then reduced to *m, leaving the current asymmetric distribution.
References
Wapan language Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA