Mboteni
Baga Pokur
Native toGuinea
Regioncoastal villages of Binari and Mboteni
Ethnicity3000 (no date)
Native speakers
3,700 (2015)[1]
Dialects
  • Baga Mboteni
  • Baga Binari
Unwritten
Language codes
ISO 639-3bcg
Glottologbaga1275
ELP

Mboteni, also known as Baga Mboteni, Baga Binari,[2] or Baga Pokur, is an endangered Rio Nunez language spoken in the coastal Rio Nunez region of Guinea. Speakers who have gone to school or work outside their villages are bilingual in Pokur and the Mande language Susu.[3]

Pokur has lost the noun-class concord found in its relatives.[4]

Geographical distribution

According to Fields (2008:33-34), Mboteni is spoken exclusively in the two villages of Mboteni and Binari on a peninsula south of the mouth of the Nunez River. Mboteni speakers are surrounded by Sitem speakers.[5][1]

Wilson (2007), based on his field reports from the 1950s, reported that Baga Mboteni (called Pukur by the speakers) was spoken on Binari Island by two clans that were hostile to each other.[2]

Classification

As one of the two Rio Nunez languages of Guinea, its closest relative is Mbulungish.[6]

Despite the name, Baga Mboteni is not one of the Baga languages, though speakers are ethnically Baga. The language is instead most closely related to Nalu and Mbulungish, though it shares a low percentage of cognate vocabulary with them.[3]

Phonology

Consonants[2]
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Plosive p b t d c ɟ k g
Fricative f s x
Nasal m n ɲ ŋ
Approximant w r, l j
Vowels[2]
Front Central Back
High i u
Mid-high e ə o
Mid-low ɛ ɔ
Low a

References

  1. 1 2 Mboteni at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. 1 2 3 4 Wilson, William André Auquier. 2007. Guinea Languages of the Atlantic group: description and internal classification. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik, 12.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
  3. 1 2 Fields, E. L. (2004). Before" Baga": Settlement Chronologies of the Coastal Rio Nunez Region, Earliest Times to C. 1000 CE. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 229-253.
  4. ↑ Wilson, W. A. A. (1961). Numeration in the Languages of Guiné. Africa, 31(04), 372-377.
  5. ↑ Fields-Black, Edda L. 2008. Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. (Blacks in the Diaspora.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  6. ↑ Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID 133888593.

Further reading

  • Baga Mboteni Profile (PDF), Go West Africa, 2009, retrieved February 12, 2015
  • Fields-Black, E. L. (2008). Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
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