Lunguda (Nʋngʋra) is a
Niger–Congo language spoken in Nigeria. They settle in the western part of Gongola mainly in and around the hills of the volcanic Lunguda Plateau, Adamawa state.
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.
Life Early life and education
Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...
counted it as a distinct branch, G10, within the
Adamawa family. When Blench (2008) broke up Adamawa, Lunguda was made a branch of the
Bambukic languages
The Bambukic Trans-Benue or Yungur–Jen languages form a proposed branch of the provisional Savanna languages, a reduced form of the Waja–Jen branch of the old Adamawa languages family (G7, G9, G10). They are spoken in north eastern Nigeria ...
.
According to the Ethnologue, the current number of speakers is based on an SIL figure of 45,000 from 1973.
[ But recent studies has shown 50,000 in the 2006 census.
Variants of the name ''Longuda'' include ''Languda, Longura, Nunguda, Nungura, Nunguraba''.
]
Dialects
In the Adamawa Languages Project website, Kleinewillinghöfer (2014) lists five dialects in the Longuda dialect cluster.[Kleinewillinghöfer, Ulrich. 2014]
Longuda group
Adamawa Languages Project.
*Longuda/Lunguda of Guyuk and Wala Lunguda (Though one is in Adamawa and the other Gombe, they share the same dialect and it is believed that the ancestral home of the Lungudas was Wala Lunguda in Gombe State.)
*Nʋngʋra(ma) of Cerii, Banjiram
*Longura(ma) of Thaarʋ (Koola)
*Nʋngʋra(ma) of Gwaanda (Nyuwar)
*Nʋngʋra(ma) of Deele (Jessu)
Partly due to word taboo
Word taboo, also called taboo language, offensive word, language taboo or linguistic taboo is a kind of taboo that involves restricting the use of words or other parts of language due to social constraints. This may be due to a taboo on specific pa ...
customs, there is considerable lexical diversity among Longuda dialects.
Geography
The Lunguda settle in the northeastern part of Nigeria, mostly in Guyuk, Adamawa state in Guyuk LGA, Balanga LGA of Gombe state and some parts of Borno. They have approximately 504,000 according to 2006 population census.
Names and locations
Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).
References
External links
Longuda
(Adamawa Languages Project)
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Languages of Nigeria
Bambukic languages