Language
The Oron people speak a dialect known as "Örö" by the Oronians, but widely called "Oron", an anglicized spelling and pronunciation. Oro language is a very distinct language spoken and understood only by Oron people. The only group who understand a little of our language are the Ekid, Ibeno and Obolo people of the state. Many Oron people are also fluent in the Efik dialect. Örö has many dialectical similarities with the Ibibio and Annang people, hence many Oronians can communicate proficiently in Ibibio and Annang languages.
The phonemes of Oron comprise seven oral vowels í, ε, e, a, o, σ, u, five plosive consonants b, kp, d, t, k, three nasal consonants m, ŋ, n, three fricative consonants f, s, h, two semi-vowel consonants w, y and one lateral consonant l. The lateral consonant is an unusual feature of Oro and it is not found in most neighbouring varieties.
The Oron language does not possess any affixes or verb forms to express passive actions; 'he is received' becomes 'they receive him'. Finally, it may be noted that the relative order of the simple Oron sentence is subject-verb-object (D. Simmons, 1956: Oron Verb Morphology).
Read more about this topic: Oron (state)
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is only words and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we do not know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.”
—Marcel Proust (18711922)
“It would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)