Lagwan (Logone) is a
Chadic language
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 196 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, and northern Cameroon. By far the most widely ...
spoken in northern
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...
and southwestern
Chad
Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North Africa, North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to Chad–Libya border, the north, Sudan to Chad–Sudan border, the east, the Central Afric ...
. Dialects include Logone-Birni and Logone-Gana.
Lagwan is spoken in the northern part of
Logone-Birni, from the banks of the
Logone River
The Logon or Logone River is a major tributary of the Chari River. The Logone's sources are located in the western Central African Republic, northern Cameroon, and southern Chad. It has two major tributaries: the Pendé River (Eastern Logone) in ...
to the Nigerian border (
Logone-et-Chari
Logone-et-Chari is a department of Extreme-Nord Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 12,133 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 486,997. The capital of the department is at Kousséri. Most inhabitants of ...
Department, Far North Region). It is also spoken in Chad and Nigeria. It has 38,500 speakers in Cameroon.
Phonology
As is common in Chadic languages, the principal vowel is the low central vowel /a/; where there is no underlying V-slot, an epenthetic ‘zero vowel’ is inserted. Despite the limited distribution of the other vowels, /i, u, e, o/ have emerging phonological status. However, as has been observed in other Chadic languages, certain contrasts are productive only word-finally, excluding the sub-lexicon of loan words.
Lagwan has two contrastive tones, low and high. Mid tone is also found on a few nouns loaned from Classical Arabic. On intensifiers the phonological high tone has an extra-high realisation.
Notes
References
* Johannes Lukas. 1936. ''Die Logone-Sprache im Zentralen Sudan''. Leipzig: DMG.
* Joy Naomi Ruff. 2005. ''Phonology of Lagwan''. Cameroon.
Biu-Mandara languages
Languages of Cameroon
Languages of Chad
{{Chad-stub