Jarawa language (Nigeria)
language of Nigeria

Jarawa (also known as Jar or Jhar, or in Hausa: Jaranci) is the most populous of the Jarawan languages of northern Nigeria. It is a dialect cluster consisting of many varieties.
Phonology
/β/ only appears as a marginal phoneme.
[ʔ] only appears in non-word-initial syllables.
Sounds /n, t, l, r/ can be heard as palatal or retroflex [ɲ, ʈ, ɭ, ɽ] in word-final position. /k/ can also be heard as uvular [q] in the same position, and may also alternate with [ʁ] or [ɢ].
Sounds /k͡x, ɡ͡ɣ/ can be heard as fricatives [x, ɣ] or [χ, ʁ] in intervocalic position.
Sounds /ɛ, ɔ/ only appear after glides.
Dialects
Jarawa dialects are:
Zhár (Bankal)
Zugur (Duguri)
Gwak (Gingwak)
Ndaŋshi
Dòòrì
Mbat (Bada)
Mùùn
Kantana
Dàmùl
Kantana may be a distinct language.
Blench (2019) lists these varieties as dialects of Jar (Jarawa).
“Jarawa language (Nigeria)” enters the record as language of Nigeria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jarawa, language and Nigeria can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jarawa language (Nigeria)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.