Degema language
| Dẹgẹma | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Nigeria |
| Region | Rivers State |
|
Native speakers
|
10,000 (1999) |
|
Niger–Congo
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | dege1246 |
Dẹgẹma is an Edoid language spoken in two separate communities on Degema Island in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, by about 22,000 people, according to 1991 census figures (including projection figures for the two Dẹgẹma-speaking communities). The two communities are Usokun-Degema and Degema Town (Atala) 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 (Atala) 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 (Atala) variety.
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.
Dẹgẹma is the only Niger-Congo language to match the vowel inventory reconstructed for Proto-Ijoid. There are ten vowels, in two harmonic sets: /i e a o u/ and /ɪ ɛ ə ɔ ʊ/.
Dẹgẹma has 24 consonants (including labialized velar-glottal sounds):
Oral tradition asserts that the Degema people (originally part of the Engenni people) migrated from Benin (in what is now the Edo State of Nigeria) to Ewu in present-day Engenni, in the Ahoada Local Government Area of Rivers State. According to Mark Roman (a native of Engenni and a staff member at the University of Port Harcourt, the people of present-day Degema settled at Ewu (near Akinima) when they left Benin with other groups who settled at Okilogua in Engenni (not in Akinima, as claimed). Roman asserts that Ewu is also in Okilogua. At Ewu, there was a split which took some of the inhabitants to Enuedua (Joinkrama) (forming the Enuedua group), some to Ediro (forming the Ediro group) and some to Ogua, forming the Ogua group. These groups make up the Engenni community. Roman also asserts that the Degema people belonged to the Ogua group.
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