Iyive language

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Bantoid language spoken in West Africa

title: "Iyive language" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["articles-in-class-projects/rutgers", "languages-of-cameroon", "languages-of-nigeria", "tivoid-languages", "endangered-niger–congo-languages", "endangered-languages-of-africa"] description: "Bantoid language spoken in West Africa" topic_path: "linguistics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyive_language" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Bantoid language spoken in West Africa ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox language"]

Field	Value
name	Iyive
altname	Uive
nativename	Yiive
familycolor	Niger-Congo
states	Cameroon, Nigeria
region	Manyu in Cameroon, Benue State in Nigeria
ethnicity	Ndir
speakers	2,000
date	1996
ref	e25
fam1	Niger–Congo
fam2	Atlantic–Congo
fam3	Volta-Congo
fam4	Benue-Congo
fam5	Bantoid
fam6	Southern Bantoid
fam7	Tivoid
fam8	Central Tivoid A
fam9	Tiv-Evand
fam10	Tiv-Iyive-Otanga
iso3	uiv
iso3comment	Iyive
<!--	guthrie
glotto	iyiv1238
glottoname	Iyive
::

Iyive, also referred to as Uive, Yiive, Ndir, Asumbo{{efn|Blench 2020 lists Uive as an alternate spelling, Yiive as the native name, Ndir as the ethnicity of the language's speakers, and Asumbo as a Cameroonian name for the language The ethnic group defined by use of this language is the Ndir.

General information

Iyive is an indigenous Tivoid language of Cameroon. It is spoken in the Southwest Region in the Manyu division, northeast of Akwaya town on the Nigeria border, Yive village. Although they live in Cameroon, the majority of Iyive's linguistic population had been forced to relocate to Nigeria due to a tribal conflict; , the Cameroonian government was helping the speakers return to Manyu.

Estimates of the number of Iyive speakers are generally around 2,000, but its level of language endangerment is somewhat unsettled. UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger lists Iyive as "severely endangered" in the 2010 edition. This corresponds to a language that is only used by the older generations, and rarely, if ever spoken to children. SIL International, on the other hand, lists the language as "vigorous". Guthrie's 1967 book classified it as moribund.

Phonology

Consonants

::data[format=table title="Consonant phonemes (from Foster 2012)"] | | | Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | | Plosive | | Double plosive | | Affricate | | Fricative | | Nasal | | Approximant | | Lateral approximant | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ::

In addition, each of the voiced plosives can be pre-nasalized: , , and . Some Iyive affricates/fricatives can also be prenasalized: , , and . Labialization and palatalization also occur, sometimes contrastively.

Vowels

There are seven vowel phonemes in Iyive, with four height values and three backness values.

::data[format=table title="Vowel phonemes (from Foster 2012)"]

	Front	Central	Back	Close	Close-mid	Open-mid	Open




::

Length is not distinctive on the vowels. Long vowels exist in situations where there is a contour tone on the vowel; all other vowels are short.

Tone

Iyive has a four-way contour tone system: high, low, falling, and rising. Tone can be contrastive for lexical and morphosyntactic features. For example, ìhɔ́ (knife) and íhɔ́ (day) are a minimal pair that differ only on the first syllable's tone. Tone can also be used to differentiate singular and plural forms, and as a question marker.

Phonotactics

Iyive has four phonotactically valid syllable templates: V, CV, CVC, and CCV. VC is also attested, but may result from phonological processes rather than an underlying VC structure.

Phonological processes

Iyive has vowel harmony, which Blench classifies as ATR harmony. This is a feature it shares with its fellow Tivoid languages Ugare (Mesaka) and Esimbi.

The vowel harmony process groups the Iyive vowels into two classes:

, ,
, , ,

Harmony generally spreads from the root to prefixes, right-to-left. Suffixes or particles that occur after the root do not appear to have harmony.

Morphology

Iyive is one of the few Niger-Congo languages to use both prefixes and suffixes, a feature shared with some other Tivoid languages. Its pluralization morphology is particularly complex; Iyive plurals can be marked at least six different morphological processes:

prefix alternation
prefix addition
affix copying
affix deletion (kә́válә́k → ávál; bamboo → bamboos)
tonal alternation (ìtʃɛ́ → ítʃɛ́; hair → hairs)
morphophonemic consonant alternation (kímómúnùkú → vímómúv; bell → bells)

Writing system

Iyive is written using Latin script.

Notes

References

(11 September 2020). "An Atlas of Nigerian Languages".
"Iyive".
(2008). "Minority language use in Cameroon and educated indigenes' attitude to their languages". International Journal of the Sociology of Language.
(2010). "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". UNESCO Publishing.
(2025). "The Handbook of Multilingualism, Identity, and Language Endangerment in Africa".
(1967). "The classification of the Bantu languages". Published for the International African Institute by Dawsons of Pall Mall.
(22 June 2016). "New research on Tivoid and its place within Bantoid".
(20 December 2024). "An overview of the Bantoid languages". Afrika und Übersee.
(2012). "The Phonology Sketch of the Iyive Language". SIL International.

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