Abon is member of the Tivoid group of Southern Bantoid languages. It has about 1,000 speakers in Taraba State in eastern Nigeria. In particular, it is spoken in the town of Abong in the Sardauna Local Government Area. There are also Abon speakers in other parts of Nigeria, such as the capital, Abuja.
The majority of people who speak Abon are older adults. Younger people are shifting to more widely-spoken languages such as English and Hausa. As a result, Abon is considered endangered. Efforts are being made to preserve and document the language and culture of the Abon people, to teach it in schools and community centres, and to encourage cultural festivals, story telling and other traditions.
Abon is also known as Abong, Abonbo, Abõ or Ba'ban. Ways to write Abon with the Latin alphabet were developed by European missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries. More recently, a standard way to write the language has been developed.
Download an alphabet chart for Abon (Excel)
Details of the Abon alphabet (PDF) provided by Wolfram Siegel
Information about Abon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abon_language
http://www.language-archives.org/language/abo
https://www.sil.org/resources/search/language/abo
https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/abon/
Abon, Bafanji, Bebe, Bekwarra, Daka, Jarawa, Ki, Medumba, Pinyin, Tiv, Yambeta
Languages written with the Latin alphabet
Page created on 31.12.25. Last modified: 31.12.25
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