Doyayo (ethnonym: ''Dowayo'') is a language of the

Duru Duru is a ward and a village in Babati Rural District of the Manyara Region of Tanzania. Duru is one of the five villages that makes up Duru ward. Thus, the name Duru is also the name of the administrative ward. The ward comprises five village ...

branch of

Adamawa languages The Adamawa languages are a putative family of 80–90 languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in central Africa, in Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Chad, spoken altogether by only one and a half million people (as of 19 ...

spoken in

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west- central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; th ...

. ''Doyayo'' (Doo²³ya̰a̰¹yɔ¹ 'man's mouth'; alternatively Doo²waa²³ya̰a̰¹yɔ¹ 'man's child's mouth') is spoken by the Dowayo (or Doo²waa²³yɔ¹ 'man's child') ethnic group.

Names

According to ''ALCAM'' (2012), Doayo, which has 18,000 speakers, is the main language of the northern part of

Poli __NOTOC__ Poli can refer to: Food * ''Puran Poli'', a poli made up of wheat flour and puran (sweet cooked gram paste) * A Marathi name for ''chapati'', a bread made up of wheat flour Organisations * FC Timişoara Romanian first league football c ...

commune (in

Faro department Faro is a department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *Department (administrative division), a geographical and administrative di ...

, Northern Region). Taara is spoken in the mountains west of

, and Marka in the plains further northwest in Tcheboa commune,

Bénoué Bénoué is a department of North Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 13,614 km and as of 2005 had a total population of 1,781,955. The capital of the department lies at Garoua. Subdivisions The department is divided ad ...

department. The term ''Namchi'', which means "crushed ones" or "those who crush illet for us in

Fulfulde Fula ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 30 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that st ...

, is a cover term that refers not only to the Doayo, but also its neighbors Duupa and

Dugun The Dii language is a dialect cluster in the Duru branch of Savanna languages. ''Yag Dii'' is the ethnonym. ''Ethnologue'' lists ''Mambe’, Mamna’a, Goom, Boow, Ngbang, Sagzee, Vaazin, Home, Nyok'' as dialects, and notes that Goom may be a s ...

(the latter two are both

Dii languages The Dii language is a dialect cluster in the Duru branch of Savanna languages. ''Yag Dii'' is the ethnonym. ''Ethnologue'' lists ''Mambe’, Mamna’a, Goom, Boow, Ngbang, Sagzee, Vaazin, Home, Nyok'' as dialects, and notes that Goom may be a s ...

Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915 – May 7, 2001) was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages. Life Early life and education Joseph Greenberg was born on M ...

's "''Sewe''" is in fact a variety of the Doayo language documented by Griaule. The name comes from the informant's village, Sewe.

Dialects

Doyayo dialects are:Kleinewillinghöfer, Ulrich (2015)
Doyayo
*Markɛ (spoken in the northwestern plains) *Tɛ̰ɛ̰rɛ of Poli *Southern Tɛ̰ɛ̰rɛ (spoken in the mountains to the south) *Sewe (Séwé) (Note that there are two distinct Tɛ̰ɛ̰rɛ dialects.) Blench (2004) considers the Sewe dialect to be a separate language, no more closely related to Dowayo than to Koma and Vere.

References

*Roger Blench, 2004
List of Adamawa languages
(ms) {{Authority control Duru languages Languages of Cameroon