1
CLASSIFICATION AND WHERE SPOKEN
The language/dialect cluster known as Bamileke belongs to the group that
has been
termed "Eastern Grassfields Bantu" or, more currently, "Mbam-Nkam," which
is a branch
of Benue-Congo. With this in mind, Larry Hyman (personal communication,
1986) states
the following:
Bamileke is a term
somewhat arbitrarily referring to some of the grassfields
languages spoken in the French side of Cameroon, excluding related languages
on the
English side (e.g. the Ngemba dialects). It is arbitrary for your purposes
or ours to
disassociate them from the other languages except for the fact that the
term "Bamileke"
is accepted by what people told me was approximately 1/6 the population
of Cameroon,
as their first or ancestral language ("ancestral" because so many displaced
young people
in the major centers, i.e. Douala and Yaounde, do not speak Bamileke,
or at least not well).
2
NUMBER OF SPEAKERS
WTRP (1982) lists 210,000, while 313,200 are given by Voegelin
and Voegelin (1977).
Alexandre (1981) estimates 750,000 speakers. Larry Hyman believes "there
are clearly
in excess of one million speakers of Bamileke and there may be many more
in fact."
The following table summarizes estimates cited in Ethnologue (Grimes 1996):
|
Dialect
|
Number
|
Source
|
| Fe'fe' | 123,700 | SIL 1982 |
| Dschang(Yemba) | 300,000+ | SIL 1992 |
| Ghomala' | 260,000 | SIL 1982 |
| Kwa' | 8,600 | SIL 1982 |
| Medumba | 210,000 | UBS 1991 |
| Mengaka | 20,000 | SIL 1993 |
| Nda'nda' | 10,000+ | ALCAM 1984 |
| Ngiemboon | 100,000 | SIL 1987 |
| Ngomba | 10-20,000 | SIL 1994 |
| Ngombale | 45,000 | SIL 1993 |
| Ngwe | 50,000 | SIL 1992 |
| 1,137,800 or more |
3
DIALECT SITUATION
Bamileke is a local language. Radio transmissions in Bamileke are heard
on Radio
Douala in Cameroon.
4
USAGE
LACITO has been researching the Bamileke languages/dialect
situation for several
years. Larry Hyman groups "what passes as `Bamileke'" into four groups:
Fe'fe',
Ghomala, Medyumba, and Dschang. Grimes (1996) lists eleven dialects: Fe'fe',
Dschang (Yemba), Ghomala', Kwa', Medyumba (Medumba), Mengaka, Nda'nda',
Ngiemboon, Ngomba, Ngombale, and Ngwe.
5
ORTHOGRAPHIC STATUS
No information is available to us on this topic.
6
SETS OF LEARNING MATERIALS
The number of sets needed for Bamileke is unclear
at this time.
| 7. Resources | ||||
| Institutional Resources | Individual Resources | |||
| 8. Bibliography | ||||
| Learning Materials | Descriptions | Dictionaries | Readers | Others |
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