Laka or Lau is a Central Sudanic language spoken in Nigeria. It is most closely related to Kabba Laka of Chad. The Hausa refer to the Laka people of Lau as Lakawa. The language was only recently documented in the mid-2010s, and had been previously misclassified as a Mbum language along with Lau.[2][3]
| Lau Laka | |
|---|---|
| Laka | |
| Native to | Nigeria |
| Region | Lau LGA, Taraba State |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | lak (deprecated)[1] |
| Glottolog | laka1252 |
| IETF | ksp-NG |
Distribution
editLaka speakers live in Laka ward of Lau LGA (Hausa: Angawan Lakawa; formerly Garin Lakawa ‘Laka town’), Taraba State, eastern Nigeria.[2] They live alongside the Win Lau (or Lau proper; formerly Lau Habe), who are Jukunoid speakers.[4]
Lexical comparison
editThe following table compares Laka (Lau) and Laka (Chad), both of which are Central Sudanic languages, with Lau proper, a Jukunoid language.[2]
| English | Laka (Lau) | Laka (Chad) | Lau proper |
|---|---|---|---|
| animal | dā | /dā/ | nɛ̃́wkũ̂ |
| cow | mã̀ŋgɨ̄ | /màngɨ̄/ | nâw |
| chicken | kũ̄nʤá | /kūnʤá/ | zǟw |
| man | ʤĩ̀ŋgàw | /ʤìngàw/ | jĩ̂nə̀nwò |
| medicine | kũ̀mā | /kùmā/ | gâj |
References
edit- ^ Still misclassified in Ethnologue (22nd ed.) and Glottolog 4.1.
- ^ a b c Idiatov, Dmitry, Mark Van de Velde, Tope Olagunju and Bitrus Andrew. 2017. Results of the first AdaGram survey in Adamawa and Taraba States, Nigeria. 47th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (CALL) (Leiden, Netherlands).
- ^ Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
- ^ Blench, Roger. "The Central Sudanic languages in the context of Nilo-Saharan: a new overview". Academia.edu. Retrieved 25 August 2018.