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Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. [1] It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify.
Pages in category "Endangered Niger–Congo languages" The following 25 pages are in this category, out of 25 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. A.
An endangered language is a language that it is at risk of falling out of use, generally because it has few surviving speakers. If it loses all of its native people, it becomes an extinct language . UNESCO defines four levels of language endangerment between "safe" (not endangered) and "extinct": [ 1 ]
This makes Benue–Congo one of the largest subdivisions of the Niger–Congo language family, both in number of languages, of which Ethnologue counts 976 (2017), and in speakers, numbering perhaps 350 million. Benue–Congo also includes a few minor isolates in the Nigeria–Cameroon region, but their exact relationship is uncertain.
The low number of Defaka speakers, coupled with the fact that other languages dominate the region where Defaka is spoken, edges the language near extinction on a year-to-year basis. It is generally classified in an Ijoid branch of the Niger–Congo family. [3] However, the Ijoid proposal is problematic.
Endangered Niger–Congo languages (1 C, 25 P) A. ... Pages in category "Niger–Congo languages" The following 20 pages are in this category, out of 20 total.
[4] [5] Because of that, the language also goes by the name Eliri. According to the UNESCO “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger” from 2010, the language is critically endangered. [2] However, the 2020 edition of "Ethnoloɠue" describes it as endangered, counting 400 speakers among some young people and all adults. [3]
The Ijoid languages, or perhaps just Ijaw, are proposed to form a divergent branch of the hypothetical Niger–Congo family and are noted for their subject–object–verb basic word order, which is otherwise an unusual feature in Niger–Congo, shared only by such distant branches as Mande and Dogon.