Bangime language

Not to be confused with the Bangi language of central Africa.

Bangime
Baŋgɛri-mɛ
Region	Dogon cliffs, Mali
Native speakers	2,000 (2005)
Language family	Language isolate
Language codes
ISO 639-3	dba
Glottolog	bang1363
Bangi-me, among the Dogon languages

Bangime /ˌbæŋɡiˈmeɪ/ (bàŋɡí–mɛ̀, or, in full, Bàŋgɛ́rí-mɛ̀) is a language isolate spoken by 1,500 ethnic Dogon in seven villages in southern Mali, who call themselves the bàŋɡá–ndɛ̀ ("hidden people"). Long known to be highly divergent from (other) Dogon languages, it was first proposed as a possible isolate by Blench (2005). Research since then has confirmed that it appears to be unrelated to neighbouring languages.

Roger Blench, who discovered the language was not a Dogon language, notes,

This language contains some Niger–Congo roots but is lexically very remote from all other languages in West Africa. It is presumably the last remaining representative of the languages spoken prior to the expansion of the Dogon proper,

which he dates to 3,000–4,000 years ago.

Bangime has been characterised as an anti-language, i.e., a language that serves to prevent its speakers from being understood by outsiders, possibly associated with the Bangande villages having been a refuge for escapees from slave caravans.

Blench (2015) suggests that Bangime and Dogon languages may have a substratum from a "missing" branch of Nilo-Saharan that had split off relatively early from Proto-Nilo-Saharan, and tentatively calls that branch "Plateau".

Locations

Bangime is spoken in 7 villages east of Karge, near Bandiagara, Mopti Region, central Mali (Blench 2007). The villages are:

• Bara (IPA: [bara])
• Bounou (IPA: [bunu])
• Niana (IPA: [ɲana])
• Die'ni (IPA: [jene])
• Digari (IPA: [diɡarɔ])
• Doro (IPA: [dɔrɔ])
• Due (IPA: [ʔjeni])

Morphology

Bangime is an isolating language. The only productive affixes are the plural and a diminutive, which are seen in the words for the people and language above.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowels have an ±ATR distinction, which affects neighbouring consonants, but unusually for such systems, there is no ATR vowel harmony in Bangime. Vowels may be long or nasalised.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Consonants

Bangime has consonant distinctions not found in the Dogon languages.[1]

		Bilabial		Alveolar		Alveolo-palatal	Palatal		Velar			Glottal
		plain	prenasalized	plain	prenasalized		plain	labialized	plain	prenasalized	labialized
Stop	voiceless	p	ᵐp	t	ⁿt				k	ᵑk
	voiced	b	ᵐb	d	ⁿd				ɡ	ᵑg
Fricative				s		ɕ	ʒ					h
Nasal		m		n			ɲ		ŋ
Approximant				l			j	ɥ			w
Trill				r

NC sequences tend to drop the plosive, and often lenite to a nasalized sonorant: [búndà] ~ [búr̃a] ~ [bún] 'finish', [támbà] ~ [táw̃à] ~ [támà] 'chew'.

/b/ and /ɡ/ appear as [ʋ] and [ɣ], depending on the ATR status of the adjacent vowels.

/s/ appears as [ʃ] before non-low vowels, /t/ and /j/ as [tʃ] and [ʒ] before either of the high front vowels. /j/ is realized as [dʒ] after a nasal.

Tone

There are three tones on moras (short syllables): high, low and rising. In addition, falling tone may occur on long (bimoraic) syllables. Syllables may also have no inherent tone.

References

• Blench, Robert, Bangime description and word list (2005)(2007)
• Hantgan & Vydrin, "Bangime, Justification as a Language Isolate", presented at the Language Isolates in Africa workshop, Lyons, December 4, 2010
• Hantgan, Abbie, A Grammar of Bangime (draft, 2010)
• Hantgan, Abbie (July 2013). Aspects of Bangime phonology, morphology, and morphosyntax (Ph.D. thesis). Indiana University. OCLC 893980514.

External links

• Bangime at the Dogon languages and Bangime project