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Bung Language
The Bung language is a nearly extinct, endangered language of Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ... spoken by three people (in 1995) at the village of Boung on the Adamawa Plateau.Bruce Connell, 1997: Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland
It is remembered best by one speaker who learned the language at a young age, though it is not his mother tongue. A wordlist shows its strongest resemblance to be with the Ndung dialect of Mambilo ...
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Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Cameroon's population of nearly 31 million people speak 250 native languages, in addition to the national tongues of English and French, or both. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad and the Baka people (Cameroon and Gabon), Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese discoveries, Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area ''Rio dos Camarões'' (''Shrimp River''), which became ''C ...
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Tep Language
Tep is a Mambiloid language of Nigeria Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, .... ''Ethnologue'' considers it a dialect of Mambila, as speakers identify as Mambila, but it is a distinct language. References * Blench, Roger, 2011'The membership and internal structure of Bantoid and the border with Bantu' ''Bantu IV'', Humboldt University, Berlin. Mambiloid languages Languages of Nigeria {{Bantoid-lang-stub ...
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Unclassified Languages Of Africa
The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families, among which the largest are: * Niger–Congo, which include the large Atlantic-Congo and Bantu branches in West, Central, Southeast and Southern Africa. *Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel. * Saharan, Nilotic and Central Sudanic languages (previously grouped under the hypothetical Nilo-Saharan macro-family), are present in East Africa and Sahel. *Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar and parts of the Comoros. *Khoe–Kwadi languages are spoken mostly in Namibia and Botswana. *Indo-European language ...
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Languages Of Cameroon
Cameroon is home to at least 250 languages, with some accounts reporting around 600. These include 55 Afro-Asiatic languages, two Nilo-Saharan languages, four Ubangian languages, and 169 Niger–Congo languages. This latter group comprises one Senegambian language ( Fulfulde), 28 Adamawa languages, and 142 Benue–Congo languages (130 of which are Bantu languages). French and English are official languages, a heritage of Cameroon's colonial past as a colony of both France and the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1961. Eight out of the ten regions of Cameroon are primarily francophone and two are anglophone. The percentage of French and English speakers is estimated by the Presidency of Cameroon to be 70% and 30% respectively. Cameroon is a Francophone and Anglophone country, where, as of 2024, 11.957 million (41.17%) out of 29.124 million people speak French. The nation strives toward bilingualism, but in reality very few (11.6%) Cameroonians are literate in both French and ...
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Niger–Congo Languages
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area.Irene Thompson"Niger-Congo Language Family" "aboutworldlanguages", March 2015 Austronesian has almost as many member languages, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by '' Ethnologue'' is 1,540. The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 600 million people as of 2025. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half ...
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Unclassified Language
An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding influence of language contact, if different layers of its vocabulary or morphology point in different directions and it is not clear which represents the ancestral form of the language. Some poorly known extinct languages, such as Gutian and Cacán, are simply unclassifiable, and it is unlikely the situation will ever change. A supposedly unclassified language may turn out not to be a language at all, or even a distinct dialect, but merely a family, tribal or village name, or an alternative name for a people or language that is classified. If a language's genetic relationship has not been established after significant documentation of the language and comparison with other languages and families, as in the case of Basque in Europe, it is ...
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Adamawa Languages
The Adamawa languages are a putative family of 80–90 languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in Central Africa, in northern Cameroon, north-western Central African Republic, southern Chad, and eastern Nigeria, spoken altogether by only one and a half million people (as of 1996). Joseph Greenberg classified them as one branch of the Adamawa–Ubangi family of Niger–Congo languages. They are among the least studied languages in Africa, and include many endangered languages; by far the largest is Mumuye, with 400,000 speakers. A couple of unclassified languages—notably Laal and Jalaa—are found along the fringes of the Adamawa area. Geographically, the Adamawa languages lie near the location of the postulated Niger–Congo – Central Sudanic contact that may have given rise to the Atlantic–Congo family, and so may represent the central radiation of that family. Classification Joseph Greenberg postulated the Adamawa languages as a part of Adamawa–Ubang ...
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Vute Language
Vute is a Mambiloid language of Cameroon and Gabon, with a thousand speakers in Nigeria. The orthography was standardized on March 9, 1979. Noted dialect clusters are eastern, central, and Doume. Phonology Consonants Consonants in Vute are numerous and include pulmonic and implosive airstreams. Labialization is phonemic in many consonants, some of which is dialectal. Tones There are more phonemic tones than are marked in orthography, such as mid-high rising tone and mid tone being both unmarked for example. Phonologically conditioned downstep Downstep is a phenomenon in tone languages in which if two syllables have the same tone (for example, both with a high tone or both with a low tone), the second syllable is lower in pitch than the first. Two main kinds of downstep can be distin ... is unmarked. *Only in eastern dialects, on short vowels. All other dialects merge this class with low tone. Vowels References {{Northern Bantoid languages Mambiloid lang ...
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Somyev Language
Somyev (Somyewe), also known as Kila ("blacksmith" in Fulfulde), is a nearly extinct Mambiloid language of two villages, one in Nigeria and one in Cameroon, that is spoken by a caste of blacksmiths that live among the Mambila The Mambilla or Mambila people of Nigeria live on the Mambilla Plateau (in Sardauna, Nigeria, 'Sardauna' local government area (formerly, Mambilla LGA) of Taraba State in Nigeria). A small fraction of Mambilla migrants left the Mambilla Plateau fo .... Although the language is still used for daily communication, the youngest generation of speakers were born in the 1950s. Transmission of the language ceased when the profession of blacksmithing lost its social status, partly due to imports of foreign tools.Connell, B. (1997)Moribund languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland In M. Brezinger (ed.), ''Endangered Languages in Africa.'' Cologne, Germany: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. Pp 197–213. References Mambiloid languages Languages of Cameroon Languages ...
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Kwanja Language
Kwanja (Konja) is a Mambiloid language of Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R .... Njanga (Nyanjang) is a distinct dialect. References Mambiloid languages Languages of Cameroon {{Bantoid-lang-stub ...
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Adamawa Province
The Adamawa Region () is a constituent region of the Cameroon, Republic of Cameroon. It borders the Centre Region (Cameroon), Centre and East Region (Cameroon), East regions to the south, the Northwest Region (Cameroon), Northwest and West Region (Cameroon), West regions to the southwest, Nigeria to the west, the Central African Republic (CAR) to the east, and the North Region (Cameroon), North Region to the north. This mountainous area forms the barrier between Cameroon's forested south and savanna north. At almost 64,000 km2 in land area, the Adamawa is the third largest of regions of Cameroon, Cameroon's ten regions. The land is rugged and sparsely populated, however, as most is devoted to the rearing of cattle. The Islam, Muslim Fula people, Fulbe (Fulani) form the major ethnic group, though Tikar, Gbaya people, Gbaya, and other peoples are present in lesser numbers. History Early population movements The Adamawa's oldest populations were various Paleo-Sudanese peo ...
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Mambiloid Languages
The twelve Mambiloid languages are languages spoken by the Mambila and related peoples mostly in eastern Nigeria and in Cameroon. In Nigeria the largest group is Mambila (there is also a small Mambila population in Cameroon). In Cameroon the largest group is Vute. Languages The following classification follows Blench (2011). Languages with (?) are not listed in that source, but close to other languages according to ''Ethnologue''. Ndoro–Fam may be a separate branch of Benue–Congo. *Mambiloid ** Ndoola (Ndoro) **Mambiloid proper *** Nizaa (Suga) ***Mambila–Konja ****Konja: Kwanja, ? Twendi ****Mambila–Vute *****Mambila–Kamkam ******Magu–Kamkam–Kila: Mbongno, Mvanip (Mvano), ? Somyev, ? Ndunda ****** Mambila *****Tep–Vute ****** Tep ******Vute: Vute, Wawa ''Ethnologue'' also lists Njerep, which most likely lies somewhere in the Mambila–Kamkam branch. The extinct Yeni, Luo and Kasabe languages were apparently Mambiloid, the first two close to Njerep. ...
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