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 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Ca ...

spoken in northern Cameroon and southwestern Chad. Dialects include Logone-Birni and Logone-Gana. Lagwan is spoken in the northern part of

Logone-Birni Logone-Birni is a town and commune in Cameroon. The town lies on the left (west) bank of the Logone River which at this point forms the state boundary between Cameroon and Chad. It is the capital of the Kotoko people, whose two other principal ...

, 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) ...

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