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An Atlas of Nigerian Languages

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An Atlas of Nigerian Languages AN ATLAS OF NIGERIAN LANGUAGES Roger Blench May be freely quoted but please acknowledge source 3rd. Edition This version May 2011 Roger Blench Kay Williamson Educational Foundation 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/Ans 0044-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7967-696804 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................................................i 2. Definition of a Language...................................................................................................................................i 3. Form of the Head-Entries................................................................................................................................ii 4. Language and Ethnicity ...................................................................................................................................ii 5. Changes in the Language Map...................................................................................................................... iii 5.1 From Numbers to Names............................................................................................................................ iii 5.2 Addition of new languages......................................................................................................................... iii 6. Reclassification of Languages........................................................................................................................ iii Naming of subgroups.........................................................................................................................................iv 7. Addition and Correction of Topographic and Institutional Features........................................................iv 8. Changes in Language Distribution .................................................................................................................v 8.1 Rural-Rural Migration and language distribution ........................................................................................v 8.2 Rural-Urban Migration and language distribution .......................................................................................v 8.3 Languages spoken by pastoralists.................................................................................................................v 8.4 Regions of mixed population........................................................................................................................v 8.5 Distribution of second languages .................................................................................................................v 8.6 Language endangerment and death ..............................................................................................................v 8.7 Pattern of language endangerment...............................................................................................................vi 9. Queries........................................................................................................................................................... viii 9.1 Resolving Queries..................................................................................................................................... viii 9.2 Unresolved Queries .....................................................................................................................................ix 9.3 Updating ......................................................................................................................................................ix 9.3.1 Maps .....................................................................................................................................................ix 9.3.2 Literacy and Printed materials...............................................................................................................x 9.3.3 Non-print media.....................................................................................................................................x 9.3.4 Language Use ........................................................................................................................................x 10. New Media.......................................................................................................................................................x 11. Scripts ..............................................................................................................................................................x 12. Deaf and sign languages.................................................................................................................................x 13. Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................................................x Key to the Index..................................................................................................................................................xii TABLES Table 1. Distribution of languages with no status data by country ................................................................vi Table 2. Nigerian languages written in Arabic script .......................................................................................x Table 3. Individuals contributing information on particular languages ................................................................xi i 1. Introduction The present electronic is a fully revised and updated edition of ‘An Index of Nigerian Languages’ by David Crozier and Roger Blench (1992), which replaced Keir Hansford, John Bendor-Samuel and Ron Stanford (1976), a pioneering attempt to synthesize what was known at the time about the languages of Nigeria and their classification. Since 1990, all new information was either collected in the field by Roger Blench or resulted from personal communications with him, hence his sole authorship of the present version. Many new cagteories of information have been added since the 1992 edition, largely resulting from technologicla and social change. 2. Definition of a Language The preparation of a listing of Nigerian languages inevitably begs the question of the definition of a language. The terms ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ have rather different meanings in informal speech from the more rigorous definitions that must be attempted by linguists. Dialect, in particular, is a somewhat pejorative term suggesting it is merely a local variant of a ‘central’ language. In linguistic terms, however, dialect is merely a regional, social or occupational variant of another speech-form. There is no presupposition about its importance or otherwise. Because of these problems, the more neutral term ‘lect’ is coming into increasing use to describe any type of distinctive speech-form. However, the Index inevitably must have head entries and this involves selecting some terms from the thousands of names recorded and using them to cover a particular linguistic nucleus. In general, the choice of a particular lect name as a head-entry should ideally be made solely on linguistic grounds. In the first edition of the Index of Nigerian languages it was suggested that in the absence of absolute recognised criteria, mutual intelligibility, lexicostatistics and sociolinguistic factors would be needed to determine appropriate groupings of lects as languages and dialects. As recognised then, even now, the information about many of the languages listed in this index is too limited to actually make these sorts of judgment in a scientifically measured way. Linguists have recognised for a long time that lexicostatistical counts made ‘cold’, i.e. in the absence of information about the phonology of a language group will inevitably be lower than those made by someone who has studied the sound correspondences. The idea that an arbitrary lexical cognate level of say 80 per cent alone determines the boundary between language and dialect was not espoused. Other factors must be taken into consideration. Moreover, it has become clearer that lects can have high cognacy counts and still differ substantially. For example, the languages in the Yungur cluster have cognacy counts well above 80 per cent. However, a syntactic process that has caused some of them to switch from noun-class suffixes to prefix systems has had profound implications for sentence structure. As a result to call these languages ‘the same language’ would be to stretch the usual meaning of these words to breaking point. The choice of many of the head-entries must therefore rest on the judgment of individual linguists or the viewpoint of the speech communities and will not necessarily conform to a unitary standard. This should not be taken as a charter to give any lect the status of an individual language. One of the problems of a developing sense of ethnicity is that there is a tendency to over-emphasize (or deny) linguistic differences for political and administrative reasons. A linguistic atlas should as far as possible refrain from becoming entangled in local and regional politics and stay with the language data. Nonetheless, it should also be recognised that there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. A group of people that retains a strong sense of apartness must inevitably develop an image of this in their language, especially in cultural vocabulary.
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