| Dẹgẹma | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Nigeria |
| Region | Rivers State |
Native speakers | (10,000 cited 1999)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | deg |
| Glottolog | dege1246 |
Dẹgẹma is an Edoid language spoken in two separate communities on Degema Island in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, by about 120,000 people, according to 1991 census figures (including projection figures for the two Dẹgẹma-speaking communities).[2] The two communities are Usokun-Degema and Degema Town in the Degema Local Government Area in Rivers State. Each community speaks a mutually intelligible variety of Dẹgẹma, known by the names of the communities speaking them: the Usokun variety (spoken in Usokun-Degema) and the Degema Town variety (spoken in Degema Town). Both varieties are similar in their phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties.
No standard variety has so far emerged between the two varieties of Dẹgẹma. However, there appear to be more scholarly and descriptive linguistic publications on the Usokun variety than on the Degema Town variety.[3][4]
The Dẹgẹma language is not also called "Atala" or "Udekaama", as stated in some publications. Atala is the alternative name for one of the Degema-speaking communities (Degema Town), and Udekaama is the name of a clan (which comprises Usokun-Degema and Degema Town). Similarly, "Dekema" is not an alternative name for the Degema language as contained in the entry for Degema in the Ethnologue.[citation needed]
- ^ Dẹgẹma at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ "Table 1 : Population and Landmass of Rivers State, 1991 -2006". ResearchGate. Retrieved 2021-09-12.
- ^ Kari, Ethelbert Emmanuel. 2003. Clitics in Degema: A meeting point of phonology, morphology, and syntax: Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). ISBN 4-87297-850-1.
- ^ Kari, Ethelbert Emmanuel. 2008b. Degema–English dictionary with English index. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA). ISBN 978-4-86337-018-0.
