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
Antsiranana ( mg, Antsiran̈ana ), named Diego-Suárez prior to 1975, is a city in the far north of Madagascar. Antsiranana is the capital of Diana Region. It had an estimated population of 115,015 in 2013.
History
The bay and city originally u ...
(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
Maore Comorian, or ''Shimaore'' ( French ''Mahorais''), is one of the two indigenous languages spoken in the French-ruled Comorian islands of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of the Comorian language, while ShiBushi is an unrelated Malayo-P ...
(''Shimaore''), a Bantu languages, 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 (Mayotte), Grande-Terre) including the villages of Bambo Est, M'Boueni, Passy-Kéli, Mronabeja, Kani-Kéli, Chirongui, Poroani, Ouangani, Chiconi, Sohoa, M'Tsangamouji, Acoua, Mtsangadoua, and Handrema.
Phonology
In Mayotte, Bushi was traditionally written with an informal French language, French-based Latin script, Latin 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, Mayotte: Languages
Notes
Languages of the Comoros
Languages of France
Malagasy language
Mahoran culture
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