The Ijaw languages, also spelled Ịjọ, are the languages spoken by the Ijaw people in southern Nigeria. They form a divergent branch of the Niger–Congo family (perhaps along with Defaka in a group called Ijoid), and are noted for their subject–object–verb basic word order, which is otherwise an unusual feature in Niger–Congo, shared only by such distant potential branches as Mande and Dogon. Like Mande and Dogon, Ijoid lacks even traces of the noun class system considered characteristic of Niger–Congo, and so may have split early from that family.