Cross River languages
Cross River | |
---|---|
Delta–Cross | |
Geographic distribution | Southeastern Nigeria, southwestern Cameroon |
Linguistic classification |
Niger–Congo
|
Subdivisions |
|
Glottolog | delt1251[1] |
The Cross River languages shown within Nigeria and Cameroon:
|
The Cross River or Delta–Cross languages are a branch of the Benue–Congo language family spoken in south-easternmost Nigeria, with some speakers in south-westernmost Cameroon. The branch was first formulated by Joseph Greenberg; it is one of the few of his branches of Niger–Congo that has withstood the test of time.
Greenberg's Cross River family originally included the Bendi languages. The Bendi languages were soon seen to be very different and thus were made a separate branch of Cross River, while the other languages were united under the branch Delta–Cross. However, the inclusion of Bendi in Cross River at all is doubtful, and it has been tentatively reassigned to the Southern Bantoid family, making the terms Cross River and Delta–Cross now synonymous.
Languages
There are four primary branches of Cross River:
- Central Delta, 8 languages, the most populous being Ogbia with 100,000 speakers
- the 5 Ogoni languages, with Ogoni proper (Khana) having 200,000 speakers
- Upper Cross River, 22 languages, the most populous being Lokaa with 120,000 speakers
- Lower Cross River, 23 languages, including Ibibio-Efik (3.5 million speakers)
See also
- Cross River (Nigeria), the namesake of the language group
References
- ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Delta Cross". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
External links