Ziriya (Jiriya) and Sheni (Shaini) constitute a
Kainji language of
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 ...
. They are geographically but perhaps not linguistically distinct.
Attestation
The earliest reference to the Sheni language is in Temple (1922), who links the
Sheni with the
Srubu and mentions their presence in Dan Galadima District of the
Zaria Emirate
The Zazzau, also known as the Zaria Emirate, is a traditional state with headquarters in the city of Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria. The current emir of Zazzau is Alhaji Ahmed Nuhu Bamalli who succeeded the former emir, late Alhaji Shehu Idris.
Ea ...
.
As of 2004, there are six remaining fluent speakers of Sheni and perhaps 10–15 semi-fluent speakers. Sheni informants state that their language is the same as Ziriya.
The Ziriya language is first mentioned by Shimizu (1982), who gives a brief wordlist.
[Shimizu, Kiyoshi 1982: ''Ten more wordlists with analyses from the northern Jos group of Plateau languages'' Afrika und Übersee.] The word given by Shimizu's informants differ from one another, perhaps due to faulty recall. Shimizu's informant Sarkin Abubakar Yakubu is probably the remaining speaker of the Ziriya language. He had only spoken it as a child, some sixty years prior. He could recall several greetings and some numbers, all of which corresponded to Sheni, supporting the assertion that Sheni and Ziriya were the same language.
Language status
The Sheni people have shifted to
Hausa. They now call themselves the Shenawa and refer to their language as Shenanci. The loss of their language is taken as a ''
fait accompli
Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern Engli ...
'' and there is no interest in reviving it. Its continued existence is merely a curiosity to most of the Sheno, according to Blench.
[Blench, Roger 2004: ''Notes on the Seni people and language with an addendum on the Ziriya'' Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.12]
Blench (2012) reports that there are only six speakers of Sheni.
Morphology
Sheni has a distinctive plural morphology that suggests influence from an unknown but typologically quite different language. The first element of the stem is reduplicated according to a variety of patterns. Some examples:
References
External links
Ziriya at the Endangered Languages Project
{{Platoid languages
East Kainji languages
Endangered Niger–Congo languages
Languages of Nigeria