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Berom (Birom) is a Plateau language of Nigeria.This language has alternate names for example-Afango, Birom, Gbang, Kibbo, Kibbun, Kibo, Kibyan etc. It is spoken in Plateau State and Southern part of Kaduna. The Berom seems to be the largest ethnic group in Plateau State with a population of over 2 million people. The language is locally numerically important and is consistently spoken by Berom of all ages in rural areas. However, the Berom are shifting to Hausa in cities. The small Cen and Nincut dialects may be separate languages. Approximately 1 million (2010) people speak in this language. Groups with a larger underlying population, such as the Berom and Tarok now have more than a hundred thousand speakers. Human population increase has also had a major impact on surrounding non-Plateau speakers and in some cases this has been problematic for language competence, especially with the spread of Hausa. Nonetheless, any language with a few thousand speakers should be treated as potentially endangered; social and economic forces can conspire to change its outward circumstances very rapidly.

Classification
The Berom language can be classified under Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Plateau and Beromic.

History
The Berom have a link to the Nok civilization, a civilization that existed between 200BC to 1000AD Berom people have migrated from as far as Ethiopia, moving to Sudan, Chad then to Niger where they started to live near Lake Chad. Later, they moved to Plateau state of Nigeria. It is assumed that the forefathers of this tribe were either called worom or orom (an independent form of the speaker). These people established themselves in Kabong and Riyom and according to the historical evidence, their ancestors used to live in those areas. The Berom people lived in central Nigeria and were politically very active even though their number was small. The language has approximately 500,000 speakers and this language is spoken at different locations of Plateau and Kaduna States.

Official Status
Berom language status is still developing and currently it belongs in level 5. Children and adults are less likely to speak it in the city. In the village all ages speak it consistently. However, the speakers are currently shifting to Hausa [Hau]. In Berom population, the literacy rate in L1: 10% - 30% and literacy rate in L2: is 25%-50%.

Dialect varieties
The dialect varieties are: Ropp, Fan, Heikpang, Foron, Du, Gyel, Zawan, Kuru Vwang, Riyom, Rim, Bachi, Gashish. Three dialect groups: Eastern (Ropp, Fan, Heikpang, Foron, Du), Central (Gyel, Zawan, Kuru, Vwang), Western (Riyom, Rim, Bachi, Gashish)

Consonants
Eastern Berom consists of twenty-four consonant phonemes In Berom, approximants are found in the last position. for example- orthographic rou is /ròw/ and vei is /vèy/.

Vowels
This language consists of seven vowel phonemes : Berom consists of three type of tones and four glide tones (Bouquiaux 1970). The glide tones are treated here as rising and falling tones. The tones are as follows:

/tút / = (to climb) for a high tone

/shɛl/ = (small) No tone mark is demonstrated for the Mid tone.

/bàsa/ = (to teach, read,) for a low tone

/nepâs/ = (new) for a falling tone

/sǎn/ = (empty) for a rising tone

Writing Systems
Berom language is written in Latin script. Latin script [Latn], used since 1917, 3 orthographies have been unified in 1973, though we hardly find enough information in the literature about orthography.

However, the examples that are found in various articles, are written following some of the IPA characters.

Examples
1. lɔ mó ha sé lish =   the house is long

2. cɔ̀gɔt yèmó ya sé lyìsh = this wood/tree is long/tall

3. hwa lwish a sé pyɛ̀ kaa = a tall woman is a thing of pride

4. kèkwèy ó kà sé kèlìsh ó = the child is tall