Bijago or Bidyogo is the language of the
Bissagos Archipelago of
Guinea-Bissau. There are some difficulties of grammar and intelligibility between dialects, with the Kamona dialect being unintelligible to the others.
Dialects are as follows:
* Anhaki on Canhabaque (
Roxa) Island
* Kagbaaga on
Bubaque Island
* Kajoko on
Orango
Orango is one of the Bijagós Islands, located off the coast of mainland Guinea-Bissau. At , it is the largest island in the archipelago. The island has a population of 1,250 (2009 census); the largest village is Eticoga. and
Uno
Uno or UNO may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Television
* "Uno" (''Better Call Saul''), premiere episode of the American TV series ''Better Call Saul''
* ''Uno'' (film), a 2004 Norwegian drama film
* Rai Uno, an Italian TV channel
**' ...
Islands.
* Kamona on the northern
Caravela and
Carache Islands
Characteristics
The Kajoko dialect is one of the few in the world known to use a
linguolabial consonant, the voiced stop , in its basic sound system (Olson et al. 2009).
Classification
Bijago is highly divergent. Sapir (1971) classified it as an isolate within the
West Atlantic family. However, Segerer showed that this is primarily due to unrecognized sound changes, and that Bijago is in fact close to the
Bak languages
The Bak languages are a group of typologically Atlantic languages of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau linked in 2010 to the erstwhile Atlantic isolate Bijago. Bak languages are non- tonal.
Name
David Dalby coined the term ''Bak'' from the ''bVk''- pre ...
. For example, the following cognates in Bijago and
Joola Kasa (a Bak language) are completely regular, but had not previously been identified (Segerer 2010):
See also
*
Bijogo word list (Wiktionary)
References
* Olson, Kenneth S., D. William Reiman, Fernando Sabio & Filipe Alberto da Silva. 2009. The voiced linguolabial plosive in Kajoko. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 45(1), 519-530.
* Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo. Oxford : Pergamon Press, 1997.
* Segerer, Guillaume. Lʼorigine des Bijogo : hypothèses de linguiste. In Gaillard, Gérald (Ed), Migrations anciennes et peuplement actuel des Côtes guinéennes, Paris : LʼHarmattan, 2000, pp. 183–191
* Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo de Bubaque (Guinée Bissau). Louvain, Paris : Editions Peeters, 2002. 310 pp.
* Guillaume Segerer & Florian Lionnet 2010. "'Isolates' in 'Atlantic'". ''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyon, Dec. 4
{{authority control
Bak languages
Languages of Guinea-Bissau