Jagham language

The Jagham language, Ejagham, also known as Ekoi, is an Ekoid language of Nigeria and Cameroon spoken by the Ekoi people. The E- in Ejagham represents the class prefix for "language", analogous to the Bantu ki- in KiSwahili

The Ekoi are one of several peoples who use Nsibidi ideographs, and may be the ones that created them.

Dialects

Ekoi is dialectally diverse. The dialects of Ejagham are divided into Western and Eastern groups:

Western varieties include Bendeghe, Northern and Southern Etung, Ekwe and Akamkpa-Ejagham;
Eastern varieties include Keaka and Obang.

Blench (2019) also lists Ekin as an Ejagham dialect.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Post-alv./ Palatal	Velar	Labio- velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	p	t	t͡ʃ	k	k͡p
voiced	b	d	d͡ʒ	ɡ	ɡ͡b
Fricative	voiceless	f	s
voiced	(β)			(ɣ)
Tap		ɾ
Approximant			j		w

Stop sounds /b, ɡ/ are lenited to fricatives [β, ɣ] when in intervocalic positions.
Velar sounds [k, ɡ; (ɣ)] can be heard as uvular [q, (ʁ)] when in syllable-final position.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i	ʉ	u
Close-mid	e	ə	o
Open-mid	ɛ	ɔ
Open		a

Writing system

A Jagham alphabet was developed by John R. Watters and Kathie Watters in 1981.

Western Jagham alphabet
a	b	bh	ch	d	e	ə	f	g	gb	gh	i	j	k	kp	m	n	ny	ŋ	o	p	r	s	t	u	ʉ	w	y

Morphology

Ekoi has the following noun classes, listed here with their Bantu equivalents. Watters (1981) says there are fewer than in Bantu because of mergers (class 4 into 3, 7 into 6, etc.), though Blench notes that there is no reason to think that the common ancestral language had as many noun classes as proto-Bantu.

Noun class	Prefix	Concord
1	N-	w, ɲ
2	a-	b
3	N-	m
5	ɛ-	j
6	a-	m
8	bi-	b
9	N-	j, ɲ
14	ɔ-	b
19	i-	f

('N' stands for a homorganic nasal. 'j' is "y".)

Works cited

Tadadjeu, Maurice (1993). "Cameroun". In Rhonda L. Hartell (ed.). Alphabets des langues africaines. Dakar: Unesco et Société internationale de linguistique.