Ijaw languages

Ijaw
Ịjọ
Ethnicity: Ijaw
Geographic
distribution:		 Southern Nigeria
Linguistic classification:

Niger–Congo

Subdivisions:
  • East
  • Central–West
ISO 639-2 / 5: ijo
Glottolog: ijoo1239[1]

The Ijaw /ˈiːdʒɔː/[2] languages, also spelled Ịjọ,[3] are the languages spoken by the Ijaw people in southern Nigeria. They form a divergent branch of the Niger–Congo family (perhaps along with Defaka in a group called Ijoid), and are noted for their subject–object–verb basic word order, which is otherwise an unusual feature in Niger–Congo, shared only by such distant potential branches as Mande and Dogon. Like Mande and Dogon, Ijoid lacks even traces of the noun class system considered characteristic of Niger–Congo, and so may have split early from that family.

Berbice Creole Dutch, a creole spoken in Guyana, has a lexicon based partly on an Ịjọ language, perhaps the ancestor of Kalabari (Kouwenberg 1994).

Usage and teaching

In June 2013, the Izon Fie instructional book and audio CDs were launched at a ceremony attended by officials of the Government of Bayelsa State. The Niger Delta University is working to expand the range of books available in the Ijaw language. Translations of poetry and the Call of the River Nun by Gabriel Okara are underway.[4]

Classification

The following classification is based on Jenewari (1989) and Williamson & Blench (2000).

References

  1. ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Ijo". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  2. ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student's Handbook, Edinburgh
  3. ↑ generally pronounced /ˈiːdʒoʊ/ in English
  4. ↑ Garba, Kabir Alabi (2013-06-08). "Izon Fie… Popularising An Indigenous Tongue". The Guardian Nigeria. Retrieved 2013-06-15.

Bibliography

On specific languages

External links