The Bung language is a nearly extinct,

endangered language An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

Cameroon Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...

spoken by three people (in 1995) at the village of Boung on the

Adamawa Plateau The Adamawa Plateau (french: Massif de l'Adamaoua) is a plateau region in west-central Africa stretching from south-eastern Nigeria through north-central Cameroon ( Adamawa and North Provinces) to the Central African Republic. The part of the pl ...

.Bruce Connell, 1997: Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland
It is remembered best by one speaker who learned the language at a young age, though it is not his mother tongue. A wordlist shows its strongest resemblance to be with the Ndung dialect of

Mambiloid language The twelve Mambiloid languages are languages spoken by the Mambila and related peoples mostly in eastern Nigeria and in Cameroon. In Nigeria the largest group is Mambila (there is also a small Mambila population in Cameroon). In Cameroon the la ...

Kwanja, although that may simply be because this has become the dominant language of the village where Bung's last speakers reside. It also has words in common with other Mambiloid languages such as

Tep Tep may refer to: *Tep language Tep is a Mambiloid language of Nigeria. ''Ethnologue'' considers it a dialect of Mambila The Mambilla or Mambila people of Nigeria live on the Mambilla Plateau (in 'Sardauna' local government area of Taraba Sta ...

, Somyev and

Vute Vute is a Mambiloid language of Cameroon and Gabon, with a thousand speakers in Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, i ...

, while a number of words' origins remain unclear (possibly Adamawan). For lack of data, it is not definitively classified.

References

External links

* The Endangered Languages Project
Bung
Niger–Congo languages Languages of Cameroon Unclassified languages of Africa Endangered Niger–Congo languages Endangered unclassified languages {{NigerCongo-lang-stub