Bushi or Kibosy (''Shibushi'' or ''Kibushi'') is a dialect of Malagasy spoken in the

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island of

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. Malagasy dialects most closely related to Bushi are spoken in northwestern Madagascar in the area of

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(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 ''

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.''

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 island of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of the Comorian language, while ShiBushi is an unrelated Malayo-Polynesian langu ...

(''Shimaore''), a Bantu language. Historically, Kibushi and Shimaore have been spoken in certain villages but Shimaore tends to be the ''de facto'' indigenous

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in everyday life because of the larger Shimaore-speaking population. Only Shimaore is represented on the local television news program by

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. Dialects of Bushi in Mayotte (known as ''Shibushi'' in Shimaore) include Kiantalaotsy 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, Poroani, Ouangani, Chiconi, Sohoa, M'Tsangamouji, Acoua, Mtsangadoua, and Handrema.

Phonology

In Mayotte, Bushi was traditionally written with an informal French-based

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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.Alphabet du Kibushi
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/raa/2020/?file=bulletinofficiel_30032020Archive
https://cg976.fr/ressources/dcp/?file=alphabets-langues-mahoraisesArchive
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Vowels

Bushi has five vowels.

Consonants

Bushi has 20 consonants.

Vocabulary

Number

* number or digit: ''isaka'' * to count: ''mañisaka''

Standard Malagasy and Kibushi: A Vocabulary Comparison

Notes

Languages of the Comoros Languages of France Malagasy language Culture of Mayotte {{Mayotte-stub