Eton language

Eton, or Ìtón, is a Bantu language spoken by the Eton people of Cameroon.[5]

Not to be confused with Eton language (Vanuatu).
Eton
Ìtón
RegionCameroon
Native speakers
250,000 (2005 census)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3eto – inclusive code
Individual code:
mct – Mengisa (duplicate code)[1]
Glottologeton1253[3]
A.71[4]

It is mutually intelligible with Ewondo, a fact which may have delayed its study for some time.

Eton speakers inhabit the Lekié department of the Centre Region of Cameroon, an area north of the capital Yaoundé bounded in the north by the Sanaga River.

Ethnologue cites four dialects of Eton, but its speakers generally distinguish two, a northern and a southern dialect, the latter of which is closer to the Ewondo language.

The Mengisa people have largely switched to Eton. A small number continue to speak their ancestral language, Leti. It is not clear if the ISO code for "Mengisa" refers to Eton or Leti; Ethnologue classifies Mengisa with Eton, but the code is likely based on Guthrie, who classified it with Leti.[1]

Phonology

Eton is a tone language. It makes use of three tones (low, high and dissimilating high) and floating tones.[5]

Grammar

Eton is an SVO language. As is common in Bantu, Eton has a noun class system. There are twelve classes and the class of a noun determines which agreement prefix it receives and triggers. For instance, verbs agree with the subject's noun class.[5]

gollark: It's aesthetically unpleasant too. Obviously this information should be apiomemetically/steganographically encoded.
gollark: You should always crop your memes to avoid tux1ization.
gollark: Palaeologos.
gollark: No. I will NOT modify my profile picture.
gollark: Greetings mortal.

References
  1. Hammarström (2015) Ethnologue 16/17/18th editions: a comprehensive review: online appendices
  2. Eton at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
    Mengisa (duplicate code)[1] at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  3. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Eton-Mengisa". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  5. Velde, Mark L. O. Van de. A Grammar of Eton, p. 3
  • Velde, Mark L. O. Van de. A Grammar of Eton, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. ISBN 978-3-11-020440-7


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