| Babanki | |
| Also Known As: | Kejom, Finge |
| Nativename: | Kəjòm[1] |
| States: | Cameroon |
| Region: | Northwest |
| Speakers: | 39,000 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Niger-Congo |
| Fam2: | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam3: | Benue–Congo |
| Fam4: | Southern Bantoid |
| Fam5: | Grassfields |
| Fam6: | Ring |
| Fam7: | Center |
| Iso3: | bbk |
| Glotto: | baba1266 |
| Glottorefname: | Babanki |
| Map: | Map of the Grassfields languages.svg |
| Mapcaption: | Linguistic map of the Grassfields languages of northwestern Cameroon. |
| Notice: | IPA |
Babanki, or Kejom (Babanki: Kəjòm [kɘ̀d͡ʒɔ́m]), is a Bantoid language that is spoken by the Babanki people of the Western Highlands of Cameroon.
Babanki is a member of the Center Ring subfamily of the Grassfields languages, which is in turn a member of the extensive Southern Bantoid subfamily of the Atlantic-Congo branch of the hypothetical Niger-Congo language family.
According to Ethnologue, there were 39,000 speakers of Babanki as of 2011, although the Endangered Languages Project states that the 39,000 figure represents the ethnic population while actual speakers of the language number around 20,000.[2]
It is mainly spoken in the villages of and (also known as Babanki Tungo and Big Babanki, respectively),[3] which are located in the Mezam department of the Northwest region of Cameroon. Languages spoken nearby include the closely related Ring languages Kom, Vengo, and Nsei to the east, and the more distantly related Eastern Grassfields languages Bafut, Mbili-Mbui, and Awing to the west. English, in particular Cameroonian Pidgin English, is commonly spoken as well, to the extent that the latter is beginning to replace Babanki in all domains, including the home. Additionally, some speakers may speak French, Cameroon's other official language besides English, and speakers living in Kejom Keku may also speak the nearby Kom language, depending on their level of interaction with the Kom community.
It has two main varieties, based on the two villages it is spoken in. They exhibit slight phonetic, phonological, and lexical differences but are mutually intelligible. A distinct variety spoken by some members of a group of ethnic Fula who live in the hills surrounding Kejom Ketinguh has also been attested.[4]
Babanki has 25 consonant phonemes. Most consonants also appear in phonemic prenasalized, labialized, and palatalized forms, although it remains ambiguous as to whether Babanki actually has these secondary articulations or if they are simply consonant clusters of simple consonants with placeless nasals, pronounced as /link/, or pronounced as /link/, respectively.
| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Labial- velar | Velar | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
| pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||||
| Approximant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||||
| Lateral approximant | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||||||
Prenasalized consonants in Babanki (all oral consonants but pronounced as //v// can appear as prenasalized) are realized in several ways depending upon the manner of articulation of the consonant in question. Preceding an obstruent and following a vowel, prenasalization is generally realized as a homorganic nasal stop (e.g. /kɘ̀ⁿt͡ʃík/→[kɘ̀ɲt͡ʃíʔ] "lid"), while preceding a sonorant and following a vowel, prenasalization is generally realized without full oral closure which tends to cause the preceding vowel to be nasalized (e.g. pronounced as //fɘ̀ⁿʃìk/→[fɘ̃̀ʃìʔ]/ "grass beetle"). Additionally, when a prenasalized consonant is word initial and has no preceding vowel, the nasal portion is often audibly syllabic and using the low tone (e.g. pronounced as //ⁿdɔ̏ŋ/→[ǹdɔ̏ŋ]/ "potato").
Babanki has eight vowel phonemes contrasting in height, roundness, and backing. Length distinction and nasalization also occur non-contrastively. Babanki is unusual in that it contrasts both the rounded and the unrounded close central vowels and the close and close-mid central unrounded vowels.
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ • pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close-mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Open-mid | (pronounced as /link/) | (pronounced as /link/) | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
In open syllables, vowels pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// are realized as close-mid pronounced as /[e]/ and pronounced as /[o]/, while in closed syllables they are realized as open-mid pronounced as /[ɛ]/ and pronounced as /[ɔ]/ (compare pronounced as /[àbé]/ "liver" and pronounced as /[bɛ̀ʔ]/ "snatch", pronounced as /[ɘ̀kó]/ "money" and pronounced as /[kɔ́ʔ]/ "chop").
Babanki has both lexical tone and grammatical tone. At the phonological level it is described as simply having a distinction between low /˨/ and high /˦/ tonemes, although a number of derived surface tonal sequences have been observed. Rarely, contour tones can occur in non-derived environments.
| Name | Notation | |
|---|---|---|
| High | pronounced as /˦/ | |
| Downstepped high | pronounced as /ꜜ˦/ | |
| Mid | pronounced as /˧/ | |
| Low | pronounced as /˨/ | |
| Low falling | pronounced as /˨˩/ | |
| High-mid falling | pronounced as /˦˧/ | |
| High-low falling | pronounced as /˦˨/ | |
| Low-high rising | pronounced as /˨˦/ |
Typically, Babanki words are composed of a CV(C) stem with optional (C)V prefixes and suffixes. The stem-initial onset is where the majority of Babanki consonants occur exclusively; onsets of affixes and function words only permit the phonemes pronounced as //t k f v s ʃ m n j ɰ//, and the only permissible coda consonants are pronounced as //m n ŋ f s k//. Allophony is much more distinct in coda consonants; pronounced as //k// is realized as a glottal stop pronounced as /[ʔ]/, and rimes ending in the alveolar nasal pronounced as //n// whose nuclei are the non-high vowels pronounced as //a e o// (i.e. pronounced as //an en on//) diphthongize, surfacing as pronounced as /[aɪ̯n~aɪ̯̃ ɛɪ̯n~ɛɪ̯̃ ɔɪ̯n~ɔɪ̯̃]/.
Vowel coalescence is also quite significant in Babanki. It occurs in pronounced as //Vɘ// and pronounced as //VCɘ// sequences (excluding those where pronounced as //C// is pronounced as /link/), where the final close-mid central unrounded vowel and (in the case of the latter) the coda consonant coalesce to a single phonetically long vowel pronounced as /[Vː]/, the quality of which cannot necessarily be determined by either vowel (although in pronounced as //Vɘ// sequences the phonetic long vowel is usually of the same quality as the phonemic first vowel). For example, the phrase pronounced as /[kɘ̀zɔ̀ː kɔ́m]/ "my speargrass" would be phonemically parsed:Here, the sequence pronounced as //ònɘ́// coalesces into the long vowel pronounced as /[ɔː]/. Although virtually all long vowels that occur in Babanki are due to this process, there are a few instances of long vowels that are not clearly derived, such as in the words pronounced as /[ɘ̀kɔ̀ː]/ "which" and pronounced as /[ⁿbɛ̀ː]/ "term of address for fon".
Linguistic research has been conducted in the Babanki community since the late 1970s. SIL Cameroon and the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL) have been actively engaged with the Babanki language and community since 1988 and 2004, respectively.
Akumbu . Pius W. . 1999 . Nominal phonological processes in Babanki . University of Yaoundé . MA.
Hyman . Larry M. . July 1979 . Tonology of the Babanki noun . Studies in African Linguistics . 10 . 2 . 159–178 .
Mutaka . Ngessimo M. . Phubon Chie . Esther . 2006 . Vowel raising in Babanki . Journal of West African Languages . 33 . 1 . 71–88 .
Phubon . Esther . 1999 . Aspects of Babanki phonology . University of Buea . BA.
Phubon . Esther . 2002 . Phonology of the Babanki verb . University of Buea . MA.
Phubon . Esther . 2007 . Lexical phonology of Babanki . University of Yaoundé I . DEA.
Phubon . Esther . 2014 . Phrasal phonology of Babanki: An outgrowth of other components of the grammar . University of Yaoundé I . PhD.
Tamanji . Pius N. . 1987 . Phonology of Babanki . MA . University of Yaoundé.
Book: Akumbu, Pius W. . 2008 . Kejom (Babanki) – English lexicon . 978-3-89645-782-0 . KWEF Kay Williamson Educational Foundation – Languages Monographs: Local Series . 2 . Blench . Roger M..
Book: Akumbu, Pius W. . 2009 . Kejom tense system. . Tanda . Vincent . Tamanji . Pius . Jick . Henry Jick . Language, literature and social discourse in Africa: Essays in honor of Emmanuel N. Chia . 183–200 . Buea . University of Buea.
Book: Akumbu . Pius W. . Chibaka . Evelyn Fogwe . 2012 . A pedagogic grammar of Babanki . Köln . Rüdiger Köppe Verlag . GA Grammatical Analyses of African Languages . 42.
Fungeh Abongkeyung Landeà. (2022). Babanki for beginners.
Book: Brye, Edward . 2001 . Rapid Appraisal Sociolinguistic Research Among the Babanki . ALCAM . 824 . Yaoundé . SIL . https://web.archive.org/web/20140907140844/http://www.sil.org/system/files/reapdata/10/50/65/105065712080039677599685021672982723232/SILESR2001_005.pdf . 2014-09-07.
C1:noun class 1C2:noun class 2C3:noun class 3C7:noun class 7ASS:associative markerSUBJ:subject markerDIR:directiveCONJ:conjunction that appears specifically between serialized verbs