The five Tarokoid languages are a branch of the
Plateau family spoken in 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 ...
, just north of the middle reaches of the
Benue River
The Benue River (french: la Bénoué), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is the major tributary of the Niger River. The river is approximately long and is almost entirely navigable during the summer months. The size of its bas ...
.
Tarok itself has 300,000 speakers, with
Pe and
Sur about 5,000 each.
Yangkam is severely endangered, being spoken by around fifty elderly men.
The Tarokoid languages have significantly influenced the
Ron languages
The Ron, Ronic or Ron–Fyer languages, group A.4 of the West Chadic languages, West Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, are spoken in Plateau State, north-central Nigeria.
The Ron languages have undergone extensive influence fro ...
and later
Ngas, but not the other
West Chadic languages
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 ...
of
Tel,
Goemai
PUR:purpose
SG:singular
DEF:definite
ADVZ:adverbializer
S:subject (intransitive and transitive) pronoun
IDEOPH:ideophone
O:object pronoun
CONS:consequence clause
PAST.REM:remote past
DIM:diminutive
GEN:genitive
INSIDE:inside
Goemai (also Ankw ...
,
Mupun, and
Mwaghavul. Most borrowed words went from Tarok to Chadic, although occasionally Chadic words were also borrowed into Tarok. Today,
Tarok remains the
lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
of the southern Plateau region of Nigeria.
Classification
The only language with significant data is
Tarok.
Pe (Pai) has been placed in various branches of Plateau, and
Kwang
Kwang, also spelled Gwang, is a Korean given name and name element. The meaning differs based on the hanja used.
Hanja and meaning
There are 13 hanja with this reading, and three variant forms, on the South Korean government's official list of ...
(Kwanka) was only recently added, but it now seems clear that the following five languages belong together. The classification below follows Blench (2004).
[Blench, Roger. 2004]
Tarok and related languages of east-central Nigeria
Names and locations
Below is a list of Tarokoid language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).
Reconstruction
Reconstructed Proto-Tarokoid forms proposed by Longtau (2016):
Footnotes
References
*Blench (2008
''Prospecting proto-Plateau'' Manuscript.
External links
from Roger Blench
{{Platoid languages
Plateau languages