The Adamawa languages are a group of languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in central Africa, in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad. They belong to the Adamawa-Ubangi subgroup of the Niger-Congo family. They are among the least studied groups in Africa, and include many endangered languages; by far the largest of the nearly one hundred small Adamawa languages is Mumuye, at 400,000 speakers. A couple of unclassified languages - notably Laal and Jalaa - are found along their fringes. They are divided into the following subgroups: The Adamawa Plateau (also spelled Adamaoua) is a plateau region in west-central Africa stretching from south-eastern Nigeria through north-central Cameroon (Adamawa Province) to the Central African Republic. ... The Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, southern Central African Republic, by a total of about 12 million people. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages are probably the largest group of the world in terms of different languages. ... Africa is the worlds second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. ... An endangered language is a language with so few surviving speakers that it is in danger of falling out of use. ... Unclassified languages are languages whose genetic affiliation has not been established, mostly due to lack of reliable data. ... The Laal language is a still-unclassified language spoken by about 300 people in three villages in the Moyen-Chari prefecture of Chad on opposite banks of the Chari River, called Gori (lá), Damtar (ɓual), and Mailao. ... Jalaa (autonym bàsàrə̀n dà jàlààbè̩) is an endangered language of northeastern Nigeria (Loojaa settlement in Balanga Local Government Area, Bauchi State), of uncertain (possibly Niger-Congo) origins. ...
The Fali and Dakoid languages were removed by Boyd 1989. The Bua languages are a subgroup of the Mbum-Day subgroup of the Adamawa languages spoken in southern Chad. ...
External links
List of Adamawa languages - Blench
Tula-Wiyaa languages - Blench
Leeko group - Blench
The Perema (Wom) language of northeastern Nigeria: classification, phonology and noun morphology (PDF) by Roger M. Blench, 2000. Mallam Dendo, Cambridge.
Languages in the Mande subgroup are spoken in Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Bambara, spoken in Mali, is the principal language in this subgroup.
Languages of the Adamawa East subgroup are spoken in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), and the Central African Republic.
Not all languages spoken in Africa are native to the continent.
Some African languages have a noun class system in which speakers attach prefixes and suffixes to noun stems to indicate singular or plural or to express qualities of the noun, such as size or animacy (whether the entity referred to is animate or inanimate).
Beja and Oromo rank as the principal languages of the Cushitic subgroup, with Beja spoken in Sudan and Eritrea, and Oromo in Ethiopia.
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