Oko language
Niger–Congo dialect cluster spoken in Nigeria
| Oko | |
|---|---|
| Ogori-Magongo | |
| Native to | Nigeria |
| Region | Kogi State |
Native speakers | 40,000 (2006)[1] |
Language family | |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | oks |
| Glottolog | okoe1238 |
Oko (ɔ̀kɔ́), also known as Ogori-Magongo and Oko-Eni-Osayin, is a dialect cluster spoken in Nigeria. It appears to form a branch of the "Nupe–Oko–Idoma" (noi) group of Niger–Congo languages. Most Oko speakers also speak Yoruba as a second language. The language is spoken in and around the towns of Ogori and Magongo in southwestern Kogi State, close to the Ondo and Edo state borders.
Classification
Oko is one of the Volta–Niger languages.
An automated computational analysis (ASJP 4) by Müller et al. (2013) grouped Oko within the Idomoid languages.[2]
Distribution
According to Ethnologue, Oko is spoken in:
Varieties
Oko is a dialect cluster consisting of (Ethnologue):
- Oko (Ogori, Uku)
- Osayin(Magongo, Osanyin)
- Eni
Below is a list of Ọkọ–Eni–Ọsayin language cluster names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).[3]
| Language | Alternate spellings | Other names (location-based) | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ọkọ | Uku, Oko | Ogori (town name), Gori | 4,000 (1970??) |
| Ọsayin | Osayin, Ọsayin | Magongo (town name) | 3,000 (1970??) |
| Eni | 3,000 (1970??) |
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labio- velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||||
| Plosive | Voiceless | p | t | k | k͡p | ||
| Voiced | b | d | g | ɡ͡b | |||
| Affricate | Voiceless | t͡ʃ | |||||
| Voiced | d͡ʒ | ||||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | h | |||
| Voiced | z | ||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Low | ä |
Each vowel also has a nasal equivalent.[4]
See also
- Oko word list (Wiktionary)
References
- ^ Oko at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Müller, André, Viveka Velupillai, Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Eric W. Holman, Sebastian Sauppe, Pamela Brown, Harald Hammarström, Oleg Belyaev, Johann-Mattis List, Dik Bakker, Dmitri Egorov, Matthias Urban, Robert Mailhammer, Matthew S. Dryer, Evgenia Korovina, David Beck, Helen Geyer, Pattie Epps, Anthony Grant, and Pilar Valenzuela. 2013. ASJP World Language Trees of Lexical Similarity: Version 4 (October 2013).
- ^ Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
- ^ Atoyebi, Joseph Dele (2009). A Reference Grammar of Oko. Umuneke-Okpala, Nigeria: Leipzig University Press.
