Documentation of Naki, Yemne-Kimbi languages, and Furu Awa languages (Cameroon)

Language	Naki, Ajumbu, Fang, Koshin, Mungbam, Mufu-Mundabli, Buu, Beezen, Uuhum Gigi, Bikyak, Busho, Busuu
Depositor	Jeff Good
Affiliation	University at Buffalo
Location	Cameroon
Collection ID	0779
Grant ID	NEH ID FN-50005, NEH RZ-50817-07, NSF ID BCS-1360763
Funding Body	United States National Fundation (BCS-1360763); the United States National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH FN-50005, RZ-50817-07)
Collection Status	Collection online
Landing Page Handle	http://hdl.handle.net/2196/eec8a5d0-92b1-4bc6-b264-708e144cdf1a

 

Podcast
https://fieldnotespod.com/ep-13-jeff-good-on-facilitating-language-documentation-in-cameroon/

Summary of the collection

This collection contains materials from Jeff Good’s work on languages of the North West Region of Cameroon. They include recordings on the Naki language, the Yemne-Kimbi languages of Lower Fungom, and various languages of Furu Awa region. Their collection was supported by the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology Department of Linguistics, the University at Buffalo, the United States National Fundation, and the United States National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

Group represented

A number of groups are represented in this collection. The Naki-speaking community and the groups speaking varieties associated with the referential label Yemne-Kimbi (Ajumbu, Fang, Koshin, Mungbam, Mufu-Mundabli, and Buu) are all in close contact and are found in the Grassfields cultural area of Cameroon. The Furu Awa languages are spoken in a region north of the Grassfields that historically more strongly oriented towards points further to the north. Three of the languages documented in this collection, Bikyak, Busho, and Busuu, had only a handful of speakers when the data was collected, and their current status is not clear. All of the documented languages are located in an area that has been heavily affected by the armed conflict between Ambazonian separatists and the Cameroon army (see Pommerolle & Heungoup 2017 for a general view of this political crisis). As a consequence, many language community members are currently displaced in other areas Cameroon, mainly in the West and in the Littoral Regions.

 

Language information

The language with the most materials in this collection is Naki, with a focus on the Mekaf variety of Naki. Naki has several thousand speakers associated with a number of villages including Mekaf, Small Mekaf, Mashi, Mashi Overside, and Nser. The language is likely the same as the language called Mashi [ISO 693-3 code: jms] spoken in Nigeria, but this has not been confirmed. Naki is classified within the Beboid subgroup of Bantoid. Naki is spoken in Upper Fungom, adjacent to Lower Fungom.

Lower Fungom is the most linguistically dense region of the Cameroonian Grassfields and, in all likelihood, one of the most linguistically dense regions of Africa. Thirteen villages are found in Lower Fungom. One village, Mashi, is associated with a variety of the Naki language. Another village, Kung, is associated with a Central Ring language that is documented in another ELAR collection (http://hdl.handle.net/2196/11d5b888-17a1-47fb-a7d1-efd8750a5f25). The other eleven villages are associated with varieties that do not have known close relatives outside of Lower Fungom. Five of these villages are associated with a language referred to as Mungbam, which is a scholarly label that is not recognized by Mungbam speakers. Each of these five villages is associated a distinctive linguistic variety, which are viewed within the region as separate languages from each other. The names of these varieties are the same as the names of the villages, namely Munken, Ngun, Biya, Abar, and Missong. Three varieties form a small genealogical unit, Buu, Mufu, and Mundabli and are associated with villages bearing the same names. Buu is clearly a distinct language, while Mufu and Mundabli are closely related dialects perceived as distinct languages locally. The villages of Ajumbu, Fang, and Koshin are all associated with their own languages. The collection also contains one recording of vocabulary from a variety known as Lung, which was only remembered at the time, but is closely related to Ajumbu.

The languages Bikyak, Busho, and Busuu have been referred to as the “Furu” languages and may be related to each other. They are associated with the Furu Awa region of Cameroon. They were spoken by a small number of rememberers as of 2007, and the collected documentation has not yet been carefully analyzed. The recordings were made by a team of linguists but only some are part of this collection. The current state of these languages is unknown.

Beezen and Uuhum Gigi (or Yukuben) are also associated with Furu Awa region. Recordings were made as part of some pilot work, but this collection does not represent a significant effort to document these languages. Beezen was the focus of a dedicated documentary project by Kempf et al. (2011–2017). Uuhum Gigi was the name used by the consultants that were worked with and is a label used in Cameroon for Yukuben, for which a number of sources can be found in Glottolog.

 

Special characteristics

This collection includes recordings from the initial documentary work undertaken by Jeff Good that would later develop into the KPAAM-CAM (http://kpaam-cam.org) project. While the specific materials represent a traditional approach to data collection, a key goal of this early work was to study the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon as a linguistic area, and this appears to be one of the early examples of area-based documentation. The materials of Bikyak, Busho, and Busuu represent some of the only recordings collected on these languages, and further data collection is likely no longer possible for them.

 

Collection contents

While the materials in this collection largely predate the KPAAM-CAM project (http://kpaam-cam.org), they represent the initial work that would ultimately develop into that project. The materials mostly contain recordings of grammatical and lexical elicitation, though some monologic texts were also recorded and transcription sessions of a subset of those texts are included as well. Due to the time when the materials were collected, they do not include the same level of information about the language consultants involved in the project as found in the KPAAM-CAM project. In some cases, the recordings are associated with partial ELAN transcriptions and related annotations.

 

Collection history

The data was previously deposited in an archive that is no longer operational. Some initial transcription and analysis of the data can be found in ELAN files that are part of the collection. Good et al. (2011) makes use of these materials to provide descriptive information on Naki and the Yemne-Kimbi varieties.

 

References

Breton, Roland. 1993. Is there a Furu language group? An investigation of the Cameroon-Nigeria border. Journal of West African Languages 23. 97–118. https://journalofwestafricanlanguages.org/index.php/downloads/download/67-volume2302/326-is-there-a-furu-language-group-an-investigation-on-the-cameroon-nigeria-border.

Breton, Roland 1995. Les Furu et leurs voisins découverte et essai de classification d’un groupe de langues en voie d’extinction au Cameroun: Bilan géolinguistique des missions à Furu-Awa (1984–1986). Cahiers de Sciences Humaines 31. 17–48. https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/pleins_textes_4/sci_hum/41735.pdf.

Di Carlo, Pierpaolo. 2011. Lower Fungom linguistic diversity and its historical development: Proposals from a multidisciplinary perspective. Africana Linguistica 17: 39-86. https://doi.org/10.3406/aflin.2011.994.

Good, Jeff, Jesse Lovegren, Jean Patrick Mve, Nganguep Carine Tchiemouo, Re- becca Voll & Pierpaolo Di Carlo. 2011. The languages of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon: Grammatical overview. Africana Linguistica 17. 101–164. https://doi.org/10.3406/aflin.2011.995.

Kempf, Viktoria, Roland Kießling, Vera Ngwana, Maureen Enongene, Vera Ngwana Ntube, Alexandra Binong, Christopher Fominyam, Pius Akumbu. 2011-2017. Collection “Bezen”. The Language Archive. https://hdl.handle.net/1839/30eb39c3-959e-46b3-8c89-102d56c450f4.

Pommerolle, Marie-Emmanuelle & Hans De Marie Heungoup. 2017. The “Anglophone crisis”: A tale of the Cameroonian postcolony. African Affairs 116. 526–538. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adx021

 

Acknowledgement and citation

Ngong George Bwei Kum, from the village of Mekaf, played a special role in facilitating the collection of these materials, and the success of this work, and all subsequent work associated with KPAAM-CAM would not have been possible without his efforts.

To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Good, Jeff. 2024. Documentation of Naki, Yemne-Kimbi languages, and Furu Awa languages (Cameroon). Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/cc385057-7d2a-4fa0-bf65-14839ae379e3. Accessed on [insert date here].