Yom, or Pilapila, and formerly ''Kiliŋa'' or ''Kilir'', is a

Gur language The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern Iv ...

Benin Benin ( , ; french: Bénin , ff, Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (french: République du Bénin), and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the north ...

. It is spoken in the town of

Djougou Djougou is the largest city in northwestern Benin. It is an important market town. The commune covers an area of 3,966 square kilometres and as of 2002 had a population of 181,895 people. Djougou is home to a constituent monarchy. General infor ...

and the surrounding area by the

Yoa-Lokpa people The Yoa-Lokpa are an ethnic group in Benin. They make up 59% of the population of the Donga Department, and approximately 4% of the population of the country as a whole. They speak the Yom language and the Lukpa language Lukpa (Legba, Logba) i ...

. A very closely related dialect called ''taŋgələm'' is also spoken by the Taneka people.

Phonology

Where it differs from the IPA symbol, the conventional orthography is given below the phoneme.

Vowels

In Yom orthography, long vowels are written as double vowels, e.g. for .

Consonants

Generally, /l/ is realised by �in medial and final position. For some speakers, the two allophones are in free variation. Previously was used instead of .

Grammar

Genders

Nouns are divided into genders or noun classes which can be distinguished by the pronoun used to refer to them and by their suffix, which generally bears some resemblance to the pronoun. If the noun is modified by adjectives, then the suffix appears on the adjectives and not on the noun. The table gives the singular and plural forms of the pronouns used to refer to a noun of each gender. There are also some nouns which have the pronoun ''də'' or ''bə'' without having a plural form.

Word order

Yom is predominantly an SVO language, although SOV word order is also possible. Genitives precede nouns and relative clauses follow. Adjectives, numerals and demonstratives follow the noun in that order and agree with it in number and gender. Many different constituents can preposed to the beginning of the sentence using a focus construction - for example: *, "I am eating my mango" *, "It's my mango that I'm eating"

References

Bibliography

* * {{Gur languages Oti–Volta languages Languages of Benin