Bushi or Kibosy (''Shibushi'' or ''Kibushi'') is a dialect of
Malagasy spoken in the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...
island of
Mayotte
Mayotte (; french: Mayotte, ; Shimaore: ''Maore'', ; Kibushi: ''Maori'', ), officially the Department of Mayotte (french: Département de Mayotte), is an overseas department and region and single territorial collectivity of France. It is loca ...
. Malagasy dialects most closely related to Bushi are spoken in northwestern Madagascar in the area of
Antsiranana (Diego-Suarez) and
Mahajanga (Majunga), which is also the closest point in Madagascar to Mayotte. Kibosy and Majunga together are considered one of the Malagasy languages by ''
Glottolog.''
Geographical distribution
Bushi is known as Kibushi on Mayotte and is spoken by 40% of the island's people (1980). It is spoken alongside the
Maore dialect (''Shimaore''), a
Bantu language. Historically, Kibushi and Shimaore have been spoken in certain villages but Shimaore tends to be the ''de facto'' indigenous
lingua franca in everyday life because of the larger Shimaore-speaking population. Only Shimaore is represented on the local television news program by
Réseau Outre-Mer 1re. Dialects of Bushi in Mayotte (known as ''Shibushi'' in Shimaore) include Kiantalaotse and Kibushi-Kimaore (''Shibushi-Shimaore'' in Shimaore).
Bushi is spoken along the west coast of the main island (
Grande-Terre) including the villages of Bambo Est, M'Boueni,
Passy-Kéli,
Mronabeja,
Kani-Kéli,
Chirongui
Chirongui is a commune in the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia ...
,
Poroani,
Ouangani,
Chiconi
Chiconi is a commune in the French overseas department of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia t ...
,
Sohoa,
M'Tsangamouji,
Acoua,
Mtsangadoua, and
Handrema.
Phonology
In Mayotte, Bushi was traditionally written with an informal
French-based
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
orthography. On 22 February 2006, the introduced an official alphabet that utilizes the basic Latin alphabet without c, j, q, and x and uses three extra letters: ɓ, ɗ, and n̈. Here, the letters used in the orthography are bolded, their IPA counterparts in brackets. On March 3, 2020, the announced the adoption of official orthographies in both Latin and Arabic scripts for Kibushi.
[https://cg976.fr/ressources/dcp/?file=alphabets-langues-mahoraises ]
Vowels
Bushi has five vowels.
Consonants
Bushi has 20 consonants.
See also
*
Mayotte: Languages
Notes
Languages of the Comoros
Languages of France
Malagasy language
Mahoran culture
{{Mayotte-stub