Defakeg
Diwar Wikipedia, an holloueziadur digor
Ar pennad-mañ n'eo ket peurechu c'hoazh ; ma fell deoc'h labourat warnañ deuit da welout ha lakait hoc'h ali e pajenn ar gaozeadenn.
Un is-skourr eus ar yezhoù idjoek eo an 'dafakeg, renket d'e dro ur yezh nijerek-kongoek
Ethnically, the Defaka are distinct from the Nkoroo, but they have assimilated to Nkoroo culture to such a degree that their language seems to be the only sign of a distinct Defaka identity. Use of the Defaka language however is quickly receding in favour of the language of the Nkoroo. Nowadays, most Defaka speakers are elderly people, and even among these, Defaka is rarely spoken — the total number of Defaka speakers is at most 200 nowadays (SIL/Ethnologue 15th ed.). The decrease in use of Defaka is stronger in Nkoroo town than in the Iwoma area. All children grow up speaking Nkoroo (an Ijo language) as a first language. The next most used language among the Defaka is Igbo, owing to the political influence of the Opobo since the days of the Oil Rivers Trade. Igbo has been a language of instruction in many schools in the region and still functions as a regional trade language.
The Defaka language is related to the Ijo languages, showing quite a lot of lexical similarities, some shared regular sound correspondences and some grammatical similarities with proto-Ijo. While some of the lexical similarities can be attributed to borrowing (as Defaka has been in close contact with Ijo for more than 300 years), especially the sound correspondences and the grammatical similarities point to a (somewhat distant) genetic relationship. For example, both languages have a Subject Object Verb basic word order, which is otherwise extremely rare in the Niger-Congo language family, being found only in the Mande and Dogon branches.
Also, Defaka has a sex-gender system distinguishing at least between masculine and feminine, once again a rarity among South Central Niger-Congo languages other than Ijoid and Defaka.
[kemmañ] Gwelet ivez
[kemmañ] Liammoù diavaez
- Defaka at UNESCO
- Defaka word lists and recordings at The UCLA Phonetics Lab.
