Afade language
Afade (Afaɗə) is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in eastern Nigeria and northwestern Cameroon.[1]
Afade | |
---|---|
Afaɗə | |
Native to | Cameroon, Nigeria |
Region | Far North Province, Cameroon; Borno State, Nigeria |
Native speakers | 5,000 in Cameroon (2004)[1] unknown number in Nigeria |
Afro-Asiatic
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | aal |
Glottolog | afad1236 [2] |
Classification
Afade is a member of the Biu-Mandara group of the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. It is related to the Cameroonian languages Mpade, Maslam, Malgbe, Mser, and Lagwan.
History
Phonology
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial-velar | Glottal | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n | ||||||
Tenuis plosive | p | t | k | kp | ʔ | |||
Voiced plosive | b | d | ɟ | ɡ | ɡb | ʔ | ||
Ejective | pfʼ | t̪θʼ | cʼ | kʼ | ||||
Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ||||||
Fricative | f | s ɬ | ʃ | h | ||||
Resonant | l r | j | w |
Afade has a large inventory of consonants, including ejectives, implosives, and labial-velar stops. The vowels of Afade are /i u e ɤ o ɛ ɔ a ɑ/. /a/ is front, rather than central.[3]
Geographic distribution
The speakers of Afade are the indigenous Kotoko people of Cameroon and Nigeria. In Cameroon, it is spoken in the far North region: Logone-and-Chari division, south Makari subdivision, Afade area. The language is spoken by 6,700 Cameroon speakers.
In Nigeria, Afade is spoken by 40,000 speakers in Borno state, Ngala LGA, 12 villages.
There are no known dialects.
Notes
- Afade at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Afade". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
- Bouny, P. 1977. Inventaire phonetique d'un parler Kotoko: le Mandagué de Mara. In Caprile, Jean-Pierre (ed.), Etudes Phonologiques Tschadiennes, 59–77. Paris: Société d'Études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France.
References
- P. Bouny. 1977. "Inventaire phonetique d'un parler Kotoko: le Mandagué de Mara," Etudes Phonologiques Tschadiennes. Ed. Jean-Pierre Caprile. Paris: SELAF. Pages 59–77.