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Eleme is a language spoken by Eleme people in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Eleme is a Niger-Congo language spoken by approximately 40-50,000 speakers in Rivers State in southeast Nigeria. It belongs to the Ogonoid (also known as Ogoni or Kegboid) language group, within the Cross River branch of Benue-Congo. Eleme language was originally divided into two mutual dialects of Nchia and Odido. Nchia spoken in six communities of Agbonchia, Akpajo, Alesa, Aleto, Alode and Ogale, while Odido dialect was spoken at Ebubu, Ekporo, Eteo and Onne, today, both dialects have submerged, with a few varying pronunciations.

A unique feature of Eleme is that it uses reduplication to negate verbs.

Writing System

Nasal vowels are indicated with a tilde ⟨ã ɛ̃ ĩ ɔ̃ ũ⟩.

References

1. Eleme at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) [REDACTED]
2. "Eleme - Surrey Morphology Group". www.smg.surrey.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-05-01.
3. Harrison, K. David. (2007). When languages die : the extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-19-518192-0. OCLC 65425996.
4. Eyi Ngulube 2011.

Works cited

• Eyi Ngulube, Isaac (2011). "The Eleme orthography". In Ozo-mekuri Ndimele; Tony Enyia (eds.). Orthographies of Nigerian languages: manual X. Nigeria Educational Research & Development Council. pp. 36–59.

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• Indigenous languages of Rivers State
• Ogoni languages
• Benue–Congo language stubs