IDOMA LOANWORD

This study investigates loaned words in Idoma, a Benue-Congo language spoken by approximately four million people in Benue State, Nigeria. Drawing on data from 50 native speakers and employing Item-and-Arrangement Theory and Language Transfer Theory, the researchers document the systematic phonological and morphological adaptation of loanwords from English, Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba into Idoma. The findings reveal that borrowing accounts for 23% of new lexical items, with English as the dominant donor language (67% of loans), followed by Hausa (23%), Igbo (10%), and Yoruba (1%). Crucially, the study demonstrates that borrowing into Idoma is culture-driven rather than gap-driven: for many borrowed words, Idoma originally had native equivalents, suggesting that borrowing is motivated by cultural contact and prestige rather than purely lexical need. All borrowed words undergo systematic phonological adaptation through prothetic vowel insertion, vowel epenthesis, consonant substitution, and tone assignment based on Idoma tonal rules. The study further reveals significant sociolinguistic variation: younger speakers (18-30) use borrowed words at nearly twice the rate of older speakers (51+%) (34% vs. 18%). This research contributes to Idoma linguistics documentation and provides empirical evidence for understanding loanword dynamics in Nigerian language contact situations