The Ron, Ronic or Ron–Fyer languages, group A.4 of the

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 ...

branch of the

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 family, are 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 ...

, north-central

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 ...

. The Ron languages have undergone extensive influence from Tarok.

Languages

The Ron languages, and their tentative relationships, are:Blench, Roger
Comparative Ron wordlist
;Ron * Fyer, Tambas *(branch) ** Central Ron *** Daffo-Mbar-Butura ***

Bokkos Bokkos is a Local Government Area in Plateau State, Nigeria. Its headquarters are in the town of Bokkos at . It has an area of 1,682 km and a population of 178,454 at the 2006 census. Ron languages are the indigenous languages spoken in Bok ...

*** Monguna (Shagawu) erhaps actually closer to Sha** Sha ** Mangar **Mundat–Karfa *** Mundat *** Karfa (Duhwa) ** Kulere (Richa) Blench (2019) groups the following in the (Central) Ron/Run dialect cluster: Bokkos, Mbar, Daffo–Butura, Manguna, Mangar, Sha. While noting that Ron is in fact a complex

linkage Linkage may refer to: * ''Linkage'' (album), by J-pop singer Mami Kawada, released in 2010 *Linkage (graph theory), the maximum min-degree of any of its subgraphs *Linkage (horse), an American Thoroughbred racehorse * Linkage (hierarchical cluster ...

, Blench (2003) rejects two of the connections proposed in Seibert (1998) ha with Mundat–Karfa and Mangar with Kulere/Richa *''Northern'': Fyer, Tambas *''Central'':

, Daffo-Mbar-Butura, Monguna *''Western'': Sha, Mundat, Karfa *''Southern'': Richa, Mangar

Names and locations

Below is a comprehensive list of Ron language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).

Reconstruction

Since the Ron languages form a diverse

, Ron reconstruction is not straightforward due to the lack of neat

sound correspondence In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...

s. There are many borrowings from neighbouring Niger-Congo

Plateau languages The forty or so Plateau languages are a tentative group of Benue–Congo languages spoken by 15 million people on the Jos Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa State and in adjacent areas in central Nigeria. Berom and Eggon have the most speakers. ...

that Ron had assimilated or been in contact with.Blench, Roger M. 2003
Why reconstructing comparative Ron is so problematic
In Wolff, Ekkehard (ed.), ''Topics in Chadic linguistics: papers from the 1st biennial international colloquium on the Chadic language family'' (Leipzig, July 5–8, 2001), 21-42. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Proto-Ron reconstructions 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 ...

are as follows.

Morphology

Plurals of nouns in Ron languages are typically formed with -''a''- infixes.Blench, Roger. 2021.
The erosion of number marking in West Chadic Roger Blench
'. WOCAL, Leiden.

References

External links

Comparative Ron wordlist
by

{{Authority control West Chadic languages Languages of Nigeria