Edo language

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Edo
Ẹ̀dó
Native to Nigeria
Region Edo State
Native speakers
 1 million  (1999)[1]
Niger–Congo
Latin script
Language codes
ISO 639-2 bin
ISO 639-3 bin

Edo /ˈɛdoʊ/[2] (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.

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.

Labial Labiodental Alveolar Palatal Velar Labio-velar Glottal
Nasal m
Plosive p  b
[pm bm]		 t  d
[tn dn]		 k  ɡ
[kŋ ɡŋ]		 k͡p  ɡ͡b
[k͡pŋ͡m ɡ͡bŋ͡m]
Fricative f  v s  z x  ɣ h
Close approximant ɹ̝̊  ɹ̝
Open approximant ʋ
[ʋ̃]		 l  ɹ
[n  ɾ̃]		 j
[ɲ]		 w
[ŋʷ]

The three rhotics have been described as voiced and voiceless trills plus a lax English-type approximant. However, Ladefoged[3] 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:

ABDEẸFGGbGhHIKKhKpLMMwNOỌPRRhRrSTUVVbWYZ
/a//b//d//e//ɛ//f//ɡ//ɡb//ɣ//h//i//k//x//kp//l//m//ʋ//l//o//ɔ//p//ɹ//ɹ̝̊//ɹ̝//s//t//u//v//ʋ//w//j//z/

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).

See also

References

  1. ↑ Edo reference at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
  3. ↑ Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8. 

External links

Edo language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
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