Lafofa, also Tegem–Amira, is a

dialect cluster A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varie ...

spoken in the southern

Nuba Mountains The Nuba Mountains ( ar, جبال النوبة), also referred to as the Nuba Hills, is an area located in South Kordofan, Sudan. The area is home to a group of indigenous ethnic groups known collectively as the Nuba peoples. In the Middle Ages, ...

in the south of

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

. Blench (2010) considers the Tegem and Amira varieties to be distinct languages; as Lafofa is poorly attested, there may be others. Greenberg (1950) classified Lafofa as one of the

Talodi languages Talodi is a small town in the Nuba Mountains, and a district of South Kordofan state, in southern Sudan. The town is nearly 650 km (406 miles) southwest of Khartoum. Its name is from the Talodi people of the area who speak the Talodi languag ...

, albeit a divergent one, but without much evidence. More recently this position has been abandoned, and Lafofa is left unclassified within Niger–Congo. Norton (2016) tentatively finds Lafofa to be closest to the

Ijoid languages Ijoid is a proposed but undemonstrated group of languages linking the Ijaw languages (Ịjọ) with the endangered Defaka language. The similarities, however, may be due to Ijaw influence on Defaka. The Ijoid languages, or perhaps just Ijaw, are ...

.Russell Norton, 'Lafofa: a distant Ijoid-related language'. CLAN 2016 It is considered a language isolate by Glottolog. Unlike the neighbouring Talodi-Heiban languages which have

SVO word order SVO may refer to: * Saturn Valley Online, an EarthBound MMORPG * Sheremetyevo International Airport, one three major airports serving Moscow, Russia, IATA Airport Code * Social value orientations, a psychological construct * Sparse voxel octree, an ...

, the Lafofa languages have

SOV word order SOV may refer to: * SOV, Service Operations Vessel * SOV, a former ticker symbol for Sovereign Bank * SOV, a legal cryptocurrency created by the Sovereign Currency Act of 2018 of the Republic of the Marshall Islands * SOV, the National Rail station ...

References

*Roger Blench, 2011 (ms), "Does Kordofanian constitute a group and if not, where does its languages fit into Niger-Congo

*Roger Blench, 2011 (ms), "Tegem–Amira: a previously unrecognised subgroup of Niger–Cong

Lafofa languages, Kordofanian languages Language families Severely endangered languages {{Kordofanian-lang-stub

See also

References