Edekiri languages
Encyclopedia
The Edekiri languages are spoken in a band across Togo
, Benin
and Nigeria
. The group includes:
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
, Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
and Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
. The group includes:
- the Ede dialecte cluster, including IfeIfè languageIfè is a Niger–Congo language spoken by approximately 182,000 people in Togo and Benin. It is also known as Ana, Ana-Ifé, Anago, Baate and Ede Ife. It has a lexical similarity of 87%–91% with Ede Nago....
; - ItsekiriItsekiri languageThe Itsekiri language is a major branch of the Yoruboid group of languages, which as a group, is a key member of the Volta–Niger sub-family of the Niger–Congo family of African Languages. Itsekiri is spoken by nearly 900,000 people in Nigeria as a first language and by many others as an additional...
(Nigeria, 500,000 speakers); and - the Yoruba languages Ulukwumi, MokoleMokole language (Benin)Mokole is a Yoruba language spoken in the villages surrounding the town of Kandi in Benin. It's the northernmost variety of Yoruba....
, and YorubaYoruba languageYorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
, by far the largest of the cluster with about 20 million speakers.