Yoruboid is a 'megagroup' of 14 related language clades, composed of the Igala group of dialects spoken in south 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 ...

, and the Edekiri group spoken in a band across

Togo Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

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 nort ...

and southern

, including the

Itsekiri The Itsekiri (also called the Isekiri, ''i Jekri'', ''Itsekri'', ''Ishekiri'', or Itsekhiri) are one of the Yoruboid subgroup of Nigeria's Niger Delta area, Delta State. The Itsekiris presently number 2.7 million people and live mainly in the ...

of Warri Kingdom.

Name

The name ''Yoruboid'' derives from its most widely spoken member,

Yoruba The Yoruba people (, , ) are a West African ethnic group that mainly inhabit parts of Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. The areas of these countries primarily inhabited by Yoruba are often collectively referred to as Yorubaland. The Yoruba constitute ...

, which has around 55 million primary and secondary speakers. Another well-known Yoruboid language is

(about 1,000,000 speakers). The Yoruboid group is a branch of Defoid which also includes the Akoko and Ayere-Ahan languages. The term Defoid itself is a derivative combination using the individual terms; "Ede" (meaning 'language' in most lects within the grouping), "Ife" - A city of profound cultural significance to speakers of the diverse lects, and ''oid'', a suffix meaning "to be like" or "In the same manner as". The ''Defoid'' group itself is a branch of the Benue–Congo subfamily of the wider Niger–Congo family of languages. All Yoruboid languages are tonal, with most of them having three level tones. Grammatically, they are isolating with a subject–verb–object basic word order and share significant degrees of both structural and lexical similarities.

Languages

Igala is a key Yoruboid language, spoken by 1.8 million people in the Niger-Benue confluence of central Nigeria; it is excised from the main body of Yoruboid languages to the west by Ebira and the northern Edoid languages. Igala is closely related to both Yoruba and Itsekiri languages. The Itsekiris are a riverine Yoruboid people who live in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. They maintain a distinct identity separate from other Yoruboid people but speak a very closely related language. Their neighbouring languages are the Urhobo, the Okpe, the Edo, the Ijo, and the Mahin / Ugbo, Yoruba dialects spoken in neighbouring

Ondo State Ondo State ( yo, Ìpínlẹ̀ Oǹdó) is a state in southwestern Nigeria. It was created on 3 February 1976 from the former Western State. It borders Ekiti State to the north, Kogi State to the northeast, Edo State to the east, Delta State to ...

Subdivisions

* - All dialects in the Ede cluster share between 85-95% lexical similarity and are thus all mutually intelligible without needing different specialized literature to achieve universal understanding. ** - Itsekiri is actually most closely related to SEY (South-Eastern Yoruba), and is a divergent branch thereof, but has a different standard writing orthography. *** - Some scholars classify Olukumi as separate variant of Nuclear Yoruba, and others as a dialect of SEY.

Names and locations

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

References

External links

Proto-Yoruba-Igala Swadesh list
(N. Aubry, H. Friedman & K. Pozdniakov 2004) {{DEFAULTSORT:Yoruboid Languages Volta–Niger languages