Bushi language

Bushi, Shibushi, or Kibushi is a language spoken in Madagascar and the French-ruled Comorian islands of Mayotte. In 1995, it was spoken by 806,200 people (767,000 in Madagascar and 39,200 in Mayotte).

Madagascar Bushi

Bushi is spoken in northwestern Madagascar in the area of Antsiranana (Diego-Suarez) and Mahajanga (Majunga).

Mayotte Bushi

Bushi is known as Kibushi on Mayotte and is spoken by 40% of the islands' people (1980). It is spoken alongside Shimaore, a form of Comorian, a Bantu language. Historically, Kibushi and Shimaore have been spoken in certain villages but Shimaore tends to be the de facto indigenous lingua franca in everyday life, because of the larger Shimaore-speaking population. Only Shimaore is represented on the local television news program by RFO. Dialects of Bushi in Mayotte (known as Shibushi in Shimaore) include Kiantalaotse and Kibushi-Kimaore (Shibushi-Shimaore in Shimaore).

Bushi is spoken along the west coast of the main island (Grande-Terre) including the villages of Bambo Est, M'Boueni, Passy-Kéli, Mronabeja, Kani-Kéli, Chirongui, Poroani, Ouangani, Chiconi, Sohoa, M'tsangamouji, Acoua, M'tsangadoua, Handrema.

Orthography

In Mayotte, Bushi was traditionally written with an informal French-based Latin orthography. On 22 February 2006, the Conseil de la Culture, de l'Education et de l'Environnement de Mayotte introduced an official alphabet that utilizes the basic Latin alphabet without c, j, q, and x and adds three letters: ɓ, ɗ, and n̈.^[1]

See also

• Mayotte: Languages

Notes

External links

• The Ethnologue page for Bushi.