Ekoid languages


The Ekoid languages are a dialect cluster of Southern Bantoid languages spoken principally in southeastern Nigeria and in adjacent regions of Cameroon. They have long been associated with the Bantu languages, without their status being precisely defined. Crabb remains the major monograph on these languages, although regrettably, Part II, which was to contain grammatical analyses, was never published. Crabb also reviews the literature on Ekoid up to the date of publication.
The nearby Mbe language is the closest relative of Ekoid and forms with it the Ekoid–Mbe branch of Southern Bantoid.

Languages

Ethnologue lists the following Ekoid varieties with the status of independent languages. Branching is from Watters and Yoder et al..
*
Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations from Blench.
LanguageClusterDialectsAlternate spellingsOwn name for languageEndonymOther names Other names for languageExonymSpeakersLocation
Bakor clusterBakor
AbanyomBakorAbanyom, AbanyumBefun, Bofon, Mbofon12,500 Cross River State, Ikom LGA, main village Abangkang
EfutopBakorOfutopAgbaragba8,740, 10,000 Cross River State, Ikom LGA
EkajukBakorAkajukmore than 10,000 ; 30,000 Cross River State, Ogoja LGA, Bansara, Nwang, Ntara 1,2 and 3, and Ebanibim towns
Nde–Nsele–Nta clusterBakor10,000 Cross River State, Ikom LGA
NdeBakorEkamtulufu, Mbenkpe, Udom, Mbofon, Befon4,000 ; est. 12,000
NseleBakorNselle1,000 ; est. 3,000
NtaBakorAtam, Afunatamest. 4,500
Nkem–Nkum clusterBakorCross River State, Ogoja LGA
NkemBakorNkim, Ogoja, Ishibori, Isibiri, OgbojaNkimOgojaIshibori11,000 ; est 18,000
NkumBakor5,700 ; est. 16,500
NnamBakorNdem1,230 ; est. 3,000 Cross River State, Ikom and Ogoja LGAs
Ejagham clusterEjagham5 dialects in Nigeria, 4 in CameroonEkoi 80,000 total: 45,000 in Nigeria, 35,000 in Cameroon Cross River State, Akamkpa, Ikom, Odukpani and Calabar LGAs, and in Cameroon
BendegheEjaghamBindege, Bindiga, DindigaMbumaCross River State, Ikom LGA
Etung NorthEjaghamIcuatai13,900 Cross River State, Ikom LGA
Etung SouthEjagham4,200 Cross River State, Ikom and Akamkpa LGAs
EjaghamEjaghamEkwe, Ejagam, AkamkpaCross River State, Akamkpa LGA and in Cameroon
EkinEjaghamQua, Kwa, AquaAbakpa900 active adult males : bilingual in Efik Cross River State, Odukpani and Calabar LGAs
Ndoe clusterNdoe3,000 Cross River State, Ikom LGA
EkparabongNdoeAkparabongTowns above 2,102 and 310, respectively, Akparabong Town, Bendeghe Affi
BalepNdoeAnep, Anyeb619 Balep and Opu
MbeIdum, Ikumtale, OdajeMbeM̀ bèKetuen, Mbube 9,874 ; 14,300 ; 20-30,000. 7 villages Cross River State, Ogoja LGA

Phonology

Proto-Ekoid is reconstructed with the following vowels and tones: ; high, low, rising, falling, and downstep. The rising and falling tones, though, might be composite.
It is thought to have the following consonants:
occurs at the beginning of a word, and in the middle or at the end.

Study

The first publication of Ekoid material is in Clarke where five ‘dialects’ are listed and a short wordlist of each is given. Other major early publications are Koelle, Thomas and Johnston. Although Koelle lumped his specimens in the same area, it seems that Cust was the first to link them together and place them in a group co-ordinate with Bantu but not within it. Thomas is the first author to make a correct classification of Ekoid Bantu, but oddly the much later Westermann & Bryan repeats an older, inaccurate classification. This also propagated another old error and included the Nyang languages with Ekoid. Nyang languages have their own quite distinct characteristics and are probably further from Bantu than Ekoid.
Guthrie could not accept that Ekoid formed part of Bantu. His first improbable explanation was that its ‘Bantuisms’ resulted from speakers of a Bantu language being ‘absorbed’ by those who spoke a ‘Western Sudanic’ language, in other words, the apparent parallels, were simply a massive block of loanwords. This was later modified into ‘Ekoid languages may to some extent share an origin with some of the A zone languages, but they seem to have undergone considerable perturbations’. Williamson in an influential classification of Benue–Congo assigned Ekoid to ‘Wide Bantu’ or what would now be called Bantoid, a rather untidy mass of languages lying somehow between Bantu and the remainder of Benue–Congo.
All modern classifications of Ekoid are based on Crabb and when Watters came to explore the proto-phonology of Ekoid, he used this source, rather than his own field material from the Ejagham dialects in Cameroon. A problematic aspect of Crabb is his notation of Ekoid which does not clearly distinguish phonetic from phonemic transcription. Fresh work on Ejagham by Watters has extended our knowledge of the Cameroonian dialects of Ekoid. However, an important unpublished dissertation by Asinya based in fresh fieldwork in Nigeria made an important claim about Ekoid phonology, namely that most Ekoid languages have long/short distinctions in the vowels. Ekoid has raised particular interest among Bantuists because it has a noun-class system that seems close to Bantu and yet it cannot be said to correspond exactly.