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Tikar Language
Tikar (also called Tigé, Tigré or Tikari) is a Northern Bantoid, semi-Bantu language that is spoken in Cameroon by the Tikar people, as well as by the Bedzan Pygmies, who speak their own dialect of the language''.'' A recent hypothesis by Roger Blench suggests that the Tikar language could be a divergent language in the Niger-Congo language family with an uncertain origin. Classification The little evidence available suggests that it is most closely related to the Mambiloid and Dakoid languages The Dakoid languages are a branch of the Northern Bantoid languages spoken in Taraba and Adamawa states of eastern Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially .... Dialects The Tikar language has four dialects, including ''Tikari'', ''Tigé'', and ''Túmú''. References Northern Bantoid languages Languages of Cameroon African Pygmies Tikar people {{BenueCongo-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Its nearly 27 million people speak 250 native languages. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, and the Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area ''Rio dos Camarões'' (''Shrimp River''), which became ''Cameroon'' in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tikar People
The Tikar (also Tikari, Tige, Tigar, Tigre, Tikali) are a central African people who inhabit the Western High Plateau in Cameroon. They are known as great artisans and storytellers. Once a nomadic people, some oral traditions trace the origin of the Tikar people to the Nile River Valley in present-day Sudan. Such ethnic groups were referred to in the 1969 official statistics as "Semi-Bantus" and "Sudanese Negroes." They speak a Northern Bantoid language called Tikar. One of the few African people who practiced a monotheistic traditional religion, the Tikar refer to God the Creator by the name Nyuy. They also have an extensive spiritual system of ancestral reverence. The current population of Tikar in Cameroon is approximately 168,000-173,000. This is a great difference from other enslaved and trafficked ethnic groups like the Kirdi, who still number around 15 million people. This could be due to the high number of Tikar people who were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bedzan People
The Bedzan people (singular Medzan), also known as the Tikar, are a pygmy (or perhaps pygmoid) people of Cameroon. The Bedzan community is primarily located in the village of Yoko, on the Tikar Plain, in the Mbam-et-Kim department of the Centre Region, and its population is estimated to be between 250 and 1,200. They live at the interface of the forest and the savannah, and their language is a dialect of Tikar, which is related to the Bantu languages. The Bedzan Pygmies also refer to themselves ''Tikar'', a name inspired by the Tikar people The Tikar (also Tikari, Tige, Tigar, Tigre, Tikali) are a central African people who inhabit the Western High Plateau in Cameroon. They are known as great artisans and storytellers. Once a nomadic people, some oral traditions trace the origin of ... of Bamenda Grassfields. The Bedzan may have been subjects of the Tikar fondom at one point in the past, which could explain why they speak a dialect of Tikar. Although not particularly short i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantoid
Bantoid is a major branch of the Benue–Congo language family. It consists of the Northern Bantoid languages and the Southern Bantoid languages, a division which also includes the Bantu languages that constitute the overwhelming majority and to which Bantoid is named after. History The term "Bantoid" was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu. Joseph Greenberg, in his 1963 ''The Languages of Africa'', defined Bantoid as the group to which Bantu belongs together with its closest relatives; this is the sense in which the term is still used today. However, according to Roger Blench, the Bantoid languages probably do not actually form a coherent group. Internal classification A proposal that divided Bantoid into North Bantoid and South Bantoid was introduced by Williamson. In this proposal, the Mambiloid and Dakoid languages (and later Tikar) are grouped together as North Bantoid, while everything else Bantoid is subsumed under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Bantoid Languages
Northern Bantoid (or North Bantoid) is a branch of the Bantoid languages. It consists of the Mambiloid, Dakoid, and Tikar languages of eastern Nigeria and west-central Cameroon. History A proposal that divided Bantoid into North and South Bantoid was introduced by Williamson.Blench, Roger 987'A new classification of Bantoid languages.' Unpublished paper presented at 17th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden. Blench argues for the unity of North Bantoid by citing phonological, lexical, and morphological evidence. Internal classification Blench classifies these languages as North Bantoid. *''Tikar'' (divergent) * Mambiloid (possibly including the divergent Ndoro–Fam languages) * Dakoid Language contact Dakoid languages have had long-term contact with Adamawa languages, while the Tikar language shares many similarities with the Bafia languages (also known as the A50 Bantu languages).Blench, RogerThe North Bantoid hypothesis Maps File:Map of the Bantoi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Bantoid
Northern Bantoid (or North Bantoid) is a branch of the Bantoid languages. It consists of the Mambiloid, Dakoid, and Tikar languages of eastern Nigeria and west-central Cameroon. History A proposal that divided Bantoid into North and South Bantoid was introduced by Williamson.Blench, Roger 987'A new classification of Bantoid languages.' Unpublished paper presented at 17th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden. Blench argues for the unity of North Bantoid by citing phonological, lexical, and morphological evidence. Internal classification Blench classifies these languages as North Bantoid. *''Tikar'' (divergent) *Mambiloid (possibly including the divergent Ndoro–Fam languages) * Dakoid Language contact Dakoid languages have had long-term contact with Adamawa languages, while the Tikar language shares many similarities with the Bafia languages (also known as the A50 Bantu languages).Blench, RogerThe North Bantoid hypothesis Maps File:Map of the Bantoi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-Bantu
Semi-Bantu or Semibantu is an outdated term used for specific inhabitants of the Western grassfields of Cameroon (portions of the Adamawa, West, Northwest, and Southwest regions), who speak languages that have certain characteristics to the Bantu language family, but they're excluded from them. The people themselves are considered ethnically divergent from other Bantu peoples of central and southern Africa.Blench, Roger (2011). "'The membership and internal structure of Bantoid and the border with Bantu" (PDF). Berlin: Humboldt University. p. 16. When these ethnic groups migrated into northern Cameroon, their languages were influenced by the languages of both Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language * Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for National ...-speaking ethnic groups in the forests to the south and of the Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roger Blench
Roger Marsh Blench (born August 1, 1953) is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and is based in Cambridge, England. He researches, publishes, and works as a consultant. Career Blench is known for his wide-ranging interests and has made important contributions to African linguistics, Southeast Asian linguistics, anthropology, ethnomusicology, ethnobotany, and various other related fields. He has done significant research on the Niger–Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afroasiatic families, as well as the Arunachal languages. Additionally, Blench has published extensively on the relationship between linguistics and archaeology. Blench is currently engaged in a long-term project to document the languages of central Nigeria. He has also carried out extensive research on the herder–farmer conflicts in Nigeria. Blench collaborated with the late Professor Kay Williamson, who died in January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niger–Congo Languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area.Irene Thompson"Niger-Congo Language Family" "aboutworldlanguages", March 2015 It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by ''Ethnologue'' is 1,540. If valid, it would be the third-largest language family in the world by number of native speakers, comprising around 700 million people as of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
