Tarok (), also known as Yergam or Appa is a language spoken by around 520,000 people primarily in the southeast of Nigeria's Plateau State, where it serves as a local lingua franca. Tarok is a member of the Plateau group of the AtlanticâÂÂCongo family.
Tarok has seven phonemic vowels, /i è u àààa/. The IPA symbols are included in the table below along with the orthographic form in angular brackets.
Tarok has an inventory of twenty-nine phonemic consonants, shown in the table below. Allophones are provided in parentheses.
<small><nowiki>*</nowiki> The labiovelar nasal [à Âám] occurs as an allophone of the syllabic nasal consonant before labiovelar plosives /káp/ and /gáb/.</small>
As the local lingua franca, the Tarok feature prominently in the local ethnic composition of southeast Plateau State. Many Tarok clans can also trace their ancestries back to Chadic-speaking peoples, pointing to a long history of Chadic peoples assimilating into Tarok society. Some Tarok names for neighbouring languages according to Longtau (2004):
<small> Variants of this name are YergÃÂm and Yergum.</small>