Preliminary documentation of the language ecosystem and of four endangered languages in the UNHCR camp of Minawao (Cameroon)
| Language | Chinene, Dghwede, Guduf-Gava, Sign languages |
| Depositor | Pierpaolo Di Carlo, Ndokobai Dadak, Nelson C. Tschonghongei |
| Affiliation | University at Buffalo |
| Location | Cameroon |
| Collection ID | 0821 |
| Grant ID | BCS#2109620 |
| Funding Body | U.S. National Science Foundation |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/1d0319f9-9482-4bfe-991e-200b864ec143 |
Summary of the collection
Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, this collection contains data gathered in the linguistically highly diverse UNHCR camp of Minawao by an international research team aiming to document its complex language ecosystem. Its current content includes elicitation data in three of the marginalized languages spoken in the camp (i.e. Chinene, Dghwede, and the Gava variety of Guduf-Gava) and records of multilingual and gestural behavioral patterns. While the ambitious goal of achieving such a holistic documentation is here only preliminarily sketched, and substantial work remains to be done, this initial effort provides valuable insights into this unique linguistic environment—and sets the stage for a documentary linguistics with refugee communities.
Group represented
The groups represented language-wise are displaced communities of speakers of the languages Chinene, Dghwede, and Gava that were residing in the UNHCR camp of Minawao. The groups represented in the gestural data include the deaf people of the camp, their families, and some other hearing signers of Glavda origin. The individuals whose multilingual behaviors have been documented are of varied origins, including Glavda, Kanuri, Shuwa Arabic, and Zalidva (Lamang speakers).
Language information
Chinene, Dghwede, and the Gava variety of Guduf-Gava are three marginalized Central Chadic languages that were spoken mainly in villages in rural areas in the Mandara mountains, Borno State of Nigeria, until around 2013. Then, the Boko Haram terrorist group attacked and violently conquered the whole area, driving away most of the local population. A few hundred speakers of Dghwede were among the earliest to arrive in the UNHCR camp that had been built in Minawao in June 2013. Since then, sadly the population of the camp increased steadily and also included speakers of Chinene and Gava—as well as of many other languages of the Mandara mountains and other areas along the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland (for more details, see Di Carlo et al. forthc.). As of early 2025, it is highly likely that the largest stable community of speakers of Chinene is in the camp, and that also the communities of Dghwede and Gava speakers represent a sizable proportion of their respective speaker populations. All these languages are rarely used in the camp as well as outside of it and intergenerational transmission appears threatened.
The collection also contains some data about communicative behaviors in the visual-gestural modality, including sessions of gesture elicitation and staged interactions between signers (both hearing and deaf). All of this material has yet to be analyzed in due detail. However, the gestural behaviors documented and analyzed in Di Carlo, Dadak, Goron, Boukar, and Veved (2025+) appear to cover a wide range of potential types of gestural codes, from particular to recurrent gestures up to emblems and perhaps incipient sign-like gestures (see Müller 2018).
Special characteristics
At the level of the types of data collected, this collection aims to start documenting the language ecosystem of a locale rather than focusing on a single language and lays the foundations of a holistic documentation, capturing also multilingual and multimodal communicative behaviors. At the level of the research target, this collection is the first of its kind created in a UNHCR refugee camp.
Despite the limitations inherent in data collected during a brief, intensive field study by an international research team in the relatively unexplored context of a refugee camp, this collection demonstrates significant potential for advancing the theoretical framework of language documentation.
Collection contents
This is a preliminary collection whose main goal is to provide access to the data collected in Minawao in a bid to explore the documentation of its language ecosystem—i.e. not focusing on a single language nor on spoken languages alone but, rather, trying to also include linguistic behaviors in other modalities. As of its first version, the collection contains
– lexical elicitation sessions, mostly video recorded, with individual speakers of Chinene, Dghwede, and Gava.
– videos of mainly staged interactions between hearing signers, hearing and deaf signers, and deaf signers, with some basic annotations.
– the audio recording of semi-spontaneous multilingual interactions between camp residents of diverse origins;
– Video recordings of meetings with community leaders and research participants to inform them about the project’s goals and methods
Collection history
The data was collected between January 28 and February 11, 2023. Linguistic elicitation data has been partially processed through phonetic transcriptions and glossing in ELAN. Multilingual interactional data has been provided with first-pass, basic sociolinguistic annotations (Di Carlo, Ojong Diba, and Good 2021). Data capturing visual-gestural communication has been only minimally annotated in ELAN and more analysis is planned to continue.
References
Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Rachel A. Ojong Diba, and Jeff Good. 2021. Towards a coherent methodology for the documentation of small-scale multilingualism: Dealing with speech data. International Journal of Bilingualism 25.4: 860-877.
Di Carlo, Pierpaolo, Ndokobai Dadak, Amina Goron, Made Boukar, and David Veved. Forthc. “Vers la documentation des répertoires sémiotiques dans le camp HCR de Minawao.” Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics (expected publication spring 2025).
Müller, Cornelia. 2018. Gesture and Sign: Cataclysmic Break or Dynamic Relations?. Frontiers in Psychology 9:1651. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01651.
Acknowledgement and citation
The Depositors would like to thank the local authorities at the Mokolo Divisional Office as well as in the UNHCR camp of Minawao, including all the Blamas from Zalidva, Gava, Dghwede, Chinene, Chikede, and Glavda communities who participated in preparatory meetings.
Users of any part of this collection should acknowledge Pierpaolo Di Carlo as the Principal Investigator, and Ndokobai Dadak, Amina Goron, Nelson T. Tschonghongei, Made Boukar, and David Veved as core members of the research team, and the U.S. National Science Foundation as the funder of this project. Relevant information about any other contributors is available in each session’s metadata.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Dadak, Ndokobai, Di Carlo, Pierpaolo and Nelson C. Tschonghongei. 2025. Preliminary documentation of the language ecosystem and of four endangered languages in the UNHCR camp of Minawao (Cameroon). Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/5ff9a6a4-8c2c-4423-9ec2-45bd75186a8f. Accessed on [insert date here].
