Research on Humanities and Social Sciences www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1719 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2863 (Online) Vol.3, No.21, 2013 23 The Efik Language: A Historical Profile. Offiong Ani Offiong 1 Stella Ansa 2 1.Department of Linguistics and Communication Studies, University of Calabar 2. Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Calabar E-mail of corresponding author: offiongani2005@gmail.com Abstract The Efik language which is spoken in the Southern part of Nigeria is one of the first languages to be written and studied in Nigeria. The profile of the language was very high before the amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Nigeria. Missionaries developed the orthography, the lexicon, the grammar, and the literature of the language. We are determined to analysis the language looking at it from a historical perspective, specifically from the diachronic angle. The paper is searching for historical facts which is nothing more than a scholarly interest in truth. Our sources are mainly from classified materials and documents. Also the instrument used to generate the performance data from the subjects comprised of structured questions. The samples used in this paper aids us determine the dependent variables. We are therefore trying to gain a clearer perspective of the present using the past as it concerns Efik. This paper benefits from Whorfian theory in the sense that linguistic determinism and cultural relativism are both socially and culturally bound. The study discovers that the profile of Efik is at its lowest ebb like most minority languages the world over. The paper notes that Efik which had very early contact with English when compared to most other Nigerian languages is gradually losing its security because of lack of encouragement from parents, teachers, government and the native speakers themselves. Therefore, there is an agitation by the language owners to revitalize the language. Keywords: Contact, culture, language classification, orthography, Whorfian hypothesis, 1. Introduction This paper gives an overview of the range of diachronic and synchronic analysis of the Efik language. A look is taken at the distribution of the various developmental stages. Also the classification of the language into genetic language family is analyzed. The reason for. this analysis is to ascertain how fairly the language is doing and to track if Efik is being eroded.. Crystal (2003) estimated that the total number of languages in the world was 6,809, and Efik is obviously one of them. 90% of these languages are spoken by less than 100,000 people. Between 200 and 150 languages are spoken by more than a million people, and our language of study falls within this range. There are 357 languages which have less than 50 speakers. The Cambap language (central Cameroon) has 30 speakers; the Leco language (Bolivian Andes) has about 20 speakers. Mati ke (in Northern Australia) had four speakers in 2003. A total of 46 languages have just a single speaker. Between 2003 and now, so many things must have happened with the languages of the world Language development as it concerns interference, communication, contact, convergence and attitude calls for research all over the world. Regrettable, in Europe and the Americas, with less diverse linguistic glossogamy, there is a concerted momentum in the attitude of research investigation in this area. According to Ojukwu (2003), Africa and indeed, Nigeria is a different story, a pathetic one at that. And what with Grimes' (2001) statistics of Nigerian linguistic situation: The story becomes more lamentable, viz: Number of living Nigerian languages - 505 Number spoken "as second languages - 2 Number of extinct Nigerian languages - 8 Total number of Nigerian languages - 515 (Grimes 2002). With the above statistics, we can understand why English is the official language of Nigeria and why English has influenced all Nigerian languages. Also, of these statistics, we will be able to determine why the Efik language is