Bozo languages
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The Bozo languages (sometimes Boso) are four languages spoken by the Bozo, the principal fishing people of the Niger Inland Delta in Mali. According to the 2000 census, the Bozo people number about 132,100. In the past, the Bozo cluster was thought to comprise one language but in reality there are at least four distinct languages and some dialects. The Bozo languages are part of the Soninke-Bozo subgroup of the Northwestern Mande languages — thus, their closest linguistic relative is Soninke, a major language spoken in Mali and surrounding countries. The Bozo often speak one or more regional languages like Fulfulde, Songhay, Bambara, or Soninke. The Bozo languages are tone languages with three lexical tones.
The Bozo cluster breaks down into the following varieties:
- Hainyaho (a few thousand speakers)[1]
- Tiéyaho or Tigemaxo (a few thousand speakers)
- Tièma cièwe (about 2,500 speakers)
- Sorogama/Jenaama or Sorko (about 100,000 speakers)
Hainyaho, spoken by the Hain (sg. Xan), is the most western dialect, spoken in two spots along the Niger. It is most closely related to Tigemaxo, its eastern neighbour which is spoken around Diafarabe. The central and most widely spoken Bozo language is Sorogama, which actually consists of four dialects, Pondori (south of Mopti), Kotya, Korondugu (north of Mopti) and Debo (around Lake Debo). Tièma Cièwè is the northeastern most of the Bozo cluster, spoken in the vicinity of Lake Debo.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The Ethnologue (15th edition) reports for both Hainyaho and Tigemaxo identical speaker counts: 117,696. In the fourteenth edition, this number was noted to be the number of 'all mother tongue Boso speakers'. ([1], [2]) In the light of the 100,000 or so reported speakers of Sorogama, by far the most widely spoken Bozo variety, speaker numbers for Hainyaho and Tigemaxo are put at 'a few thousand' here.
[edit] References
- Daget, Jacques & Konipo, M. & Sanakoua, M. (1953) 'La langue bozo' (Études soudaniennes, 1). Koulouba: Institut français d'Afrique noire, Gouvernement du Soudan, Centre IFAN.
- Blecke, Thomas (1998) Lexikalische Strukturen und grammatische Kategorien im Tigemaxo (Bozo, Mande). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-89645-070-0
