Chakato (Jakato �àkàtɔ̀or Jakattoe) is a

West Chadic The West Chadic languages of the Afro-Asiatic family are spoken principally in Niger and Nigeria. They include Hausa, the most populous Chadic language and a major language of West Africa. Languages The branches of West Chadic go either by n ...

language spoken in

Plateau State Plateau State is the twelfth-largest Nigerian state. It is in the centre of the country includes a range of hills surrounding the Jos Plateau, its capital, and the entire plateau itself. Plateau State is described as "The Home of Peace and To ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. It was identified by

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 ...

in 2016.Blench, Roger. 2017.
Current research on the A3 West Chadic languages
'. It is spoken by about 500 people in one village, Dokan Tofa, which is located on the Jos-

Shendam Shendam is a Local Government Area in Plateau State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the town of Shendam. It is bordered by Ibi Taraba State to the south, Qua'an Pan to the east, Pankshin to the north, and Mikang to the west. Shendam town is ...

road in

. Blench (2017) suggests that Chakato may be related to spurious records of the Jorto language. Chakato speakers claim that their language is closely related to

Goemai PUR:purpose SG:singular DEF:definite ADVZ:adverbializer S:subject (intransitive and transitive) pronoun IDEOPH:ideophone O:object pronoun CONS:consequence clause PAST.REM:remote past DIM:diminutive GEN:genitive INSIDE:inside Goemai (also Ankw ...

. Jakato is spoken in Dokan Tofa town and nearby villages in southern

. Dokan Tofa town is situated about 50 km north of

Jorto

Jorto is a putative

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

language claimed to be spoken in

, and is currently listed in ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

''. It was introduced in an ethnographic study by C. G. Ames in 1934. It has now been retired by ''

Glottolog ''Glottolog'' is a bibliographic database of the world's lesser-known languages, developed and maintained first at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (between 2015 and 2020 at the Max Planck Institute for ...

'', based on fieldwork evidence presented by

that suggests that there is no independent evidence that Jorto ever existed. On the other hand, a request to retire Jorto's ISO 639-3 jrt code was rejected because a team in Nigeria surveyed a region, that although they call their language as "Jakattoe", the "Jorto" is used by a neighboring people group. But the status of jrt code itself is later temporary changed to "Deprecated" in later 2020. In Jan 15, 2021, the SIL restored the jrt and changed its reference name to Jakattoe.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chakato language Languages of Nigeria West Chadic languages Spurious languages