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Language Information By Source

Endangered Languages in Central Africa
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Severely Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

<20

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

No data

Year of info

2007

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

Maberem

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

No data

Native Speakers Worldwide

No data

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

No data

Year of info

2007

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

"Spoken in two villages; one in Cameroon (Torbi) and one in Nigeria (Kila Yang)."

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

"Spoken in two villages; one in Cameroon (Torbi) and one in Nigeria (Kila Yang)."

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

Fufulde; Maberem

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

"Fufulde is a lingua franca. The primary language of their community is a Mambila lect, Maberem."

Critically Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

No data

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

No data

Year of info

1993

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

"Spoken at the village of Kila Yang, some few kilometres west of Mayo Ndaga..."

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

"Spoken at the village of Kila Yang, some few kilometres west of Mayo Ndaga..."

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

Mambila

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

"The correct name of the people and language is Somyewe."

Severely Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

20

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

No data

Year of info

2010

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

6.9318, 11.5136

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

No data

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

Critically Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

3-4

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

"The speaker population of Somyev, a language that seems to be very closely related to Wawa, has decreased from twenty or so to three in the last ten or fifteen years (Connell 1998, 2010); in 1997, there were still around fifteen to twenty speakers (Connell 1998), whereas in 2008 there were only three or four left (Bruce Connell p.c. 2008)."

Year of info

2010

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

No data

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

Severely Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

18

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

Speaker numbers are from B. Connell(2000).

Year of info

2009

Location and Context

Countries

Nigeria; Cameroon;

Coordinates

No data

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

No data

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

Critically Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

2

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

"Known to and used only by a blacksmith community in the Mambila region... now down to its last two speakers..."

Year of info

2010

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

No data

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

Severely Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

20

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

"The speakers call themselves Somyewe"

Year of info

1998

Location and Context

Countries

Cameroon, Nigeria

Coordinates

No data

Location description

"Somyev... is spoken in two villages, one in Cameroon and one in Nigeria, with the majority of speakers (approximately 15) being in the Nigerian village of Kila Yang"

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

"Somyev... is spoken in two villages, one in Cameroon and one in Nigeria, with the majority of speakers (approximately 15) being in the Nigerian village of Kila Yang"

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

Maberem, Fulfulde, Torbi

Domains of other languages

Primary language of the community (Maberem, Torbi), lingua franca (Fulfulde)

More on context

"[The] language [was] used only by blacksmiths... Now, in the face of important goods and changing customs, the local blacksmith trade has lost its earlier importance. In earlier times... a prospective husband was required to provide his future wife's family with... 10 hoes... The loss of traditions such as this, together with the almost exclusive use of imported hoes, has ultimately affected the status of the language. Like the most people in the general region, the Somyewe use Fulfulde as a lingua franca; however the primary language of their community... is Maberem, a Mambila lect, and it is this which the younger people - the sons and daughters of the former blacksmiths - know as their first language. In the Cameroon village where Somyev is spoken, the Somyewe have similarly adopted the language of the village, Torbi, also a Mambila lect."

Severely Endangered

Native Speakers Worldwide

18

Domains of Use

No data

Speaker Number Trends

No data

Transmission

No data

Speakers

Second-language speakers and learners

No data

Semi-speakers

No data

Child speakers

No data

Young adult speakers

No data

Older adult speakers

No data

Elder Speakers

No data

Ethnic Population

No data

Non-monolingual speakers

No data

More about speakers

No data

Year of info

Location and Context

Countries

No data

Coordinates

No data

Location description

No data

Government support

No data

Institutional support

No data

Speakers' attitudes

No data

Standard orthography

No data

Script (Writing system)

No data

Other writing systems

No data

More on writing systems

No data

Other languages used

No data

Domains of other languages

No data

More on context

No data

Media Resources

No resources

No resources

Filter By

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  1. Endangered Languages Catalogue Project. Compiled by research teams at University of Hawai'i Mānoa and Institute for Language Information and Technology (LINGUIST List) at Eastern Michigan University
    2012. "Endangered Languages Catalogue Project. Compiled By Research Teams At University of Hawai'i Mānoa and Institute For Language Information and Technology (LINGUIST List) At Eastern Michigan University."
  2. Endangered Languages in Central Africa
    Bruce Connell. 2007. "Endangered Languages in Central Africa." In Language Diversity Endangered, edited by Matthias Brenzinger. 163-178. Mouton de Gruyter.
  3. Africa
    Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. and F. K. Erhard Voeltz. 2007. "Africa." In Encyclopedia of the World's Endangered Languages, edited by Christopher Moseley. Routledge.
  4. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger
    Moseley, Christopher (ed.). 2010. Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 3rd edn. http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas. (03 June, 2011.)
    http://www.unesco.org/culture/en/endangeredlanguages/atlas
  5. Cultural Ecologies of Endangered Languages: the Case of Wawa and Njanga
    Sascha Sebastian Griffiths and Laura Robson. 2010. "Cultural Ecologies of Endangered Languages: the Case of Wawa and Njanga." In Anthropological Linguistics, 52: 217-238. Online: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_linguistics/v052/52.2.griffiths.html.
    http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/anthropological_linguistics/v052/52.2.griffiths.html
  6. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th Edition (2009)
    Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16 edn. http://www.ethnologue.com/home.asp. (15 February, 2011.)
    http://www.ethnologue.com/
  7. World Oral Literature Project
    "World Oral Literature Project." Online: http://www.oralliterature.org.
    http://www.oralliterature.org
  8. Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland
    Bruce Connell. 1998. "Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland." In Endangered Languages in Africa, edited by Matthias Brenzinger. 207-225. Köppe Verlag.
  9. The integrity of Mambiloid
    Bruce A. Connell. 2000. "The Integrity of Mambiloid." In Proceedings of the 2nd world congress of African linguistics, Leipzig 1997, edited by Ekkehard Wolff and Orin David Gensler. 197-213. Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
  10. Language Ecology and Language Endangerment: An instance from the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland
    Connell, B. (2010). Language Ecology and Language Endangerment: An instance from the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland. Journal of West African Languages 37.1: 23–32.
  11. An outline classification of the Mambiloid languages
    Blench, Roger M. 1993. An outline classification of the Mambiloid languages. Journal of West African languages 23. 105-118.
  12. Mambiloid Inside and Out: Mambiloid Integrity revisited and the situation of Somyev within Mambiloid. Paper presented at the symposium Genealogical language classification in Africa beyond Greenberg
    Connell, B. (2010). Mambiloid Inside and Out: Mambiloid Integrity revisited and the situation of Somyev within Mambiloid. Paper presented at the symposium Genealogical language classification in Africa beyond Greenberg. Berlin. Feb 2010. https://www.asaf.hu-berlin.de/afrika/linguistik-und-sprachen/veranstaltungen/greenberg-workshop/mambiloid-inside-and-out-mambiloid-integrity-revisited-and-the-situation-of-somyev-within-mambiloid
    https://www.asaf.hu-berlin.de/afrika/linguistik-und-sprachen/veranstaltungen/greenberg-workshop/mambiloid-inside-and-out-mambiloid-integrity-revisited-and-the-situation-of-somyev-within-mambiloid