Talk:Nyingwom language

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Language name[edit]

The language is commonly known as Kam, not Nyingwom. I understand the decision to use Nyingwom to distinguish Kam from the other Kam spoken in China, but I wonder if people will easily find the information they need if they look for the Kam language. I have talked to speakers of the language, and they seem to be in favour of using the name Kam as a general name.

Related to this, strictly speaking Nyingwom is the name of the people, not of the language (Nyi meaning 'person', angwom meaning 'Kam'). The endonym is àngwɔ̀m, or sometimes ngwé ngwɔ̀m 'Kam language' or ngwé nyí ngwɔ̀m 'Language of Kam people' . I changed the endonym in the article to àngwɔ̀m.

Feel free to discuss any issues regarding the language name here.

Zakske (talk) 13:36, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Language classification[edit]

I removed 'Greater Gur' and 'Waja-Kam' from the classification. There is no generally accepted evidence that places Kam in these branches. This idea originates from Blench (no date), who does not provide evidence for his hypothesis or any arguments. The currently accepted classification of Kam is simply that it is a Niger-Congo language, with some potential links to 'Adamawa' languages and some weak indications that it may be tied to Gur (see Glottolog and Lesage 2019)

Blench, Roger M. n.d. Niger Congo: an alternative view. (http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Niger-Congo/General/Niger-Congo%20an%20alternative%20view.pdf)

Lesage, Jakob. 2019. The position of Kam (Central-Eastern Nigeria) within Niger-Congo (And the overestimation of genealogical uniformity in African languages). Leiden. (Presented at the Approaches to the study of language variation and change in indigenous minority languages (ASIMIL), Leiden, the Netherlands April 3, 2019, Leiden.)

Zakske (talk) 13:43, 14 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]