Twendi, or ''Cambap'' as it is also known, is a nearly extinct
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 ...
of
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 ...
. Speakers have largely shifted to the closely related language
Kwanja, and Twendi has not been passed down to children for decades. The language is spoken in the villages of Cambap and Sanga on the Tikar Plain by no more than 30 people, the youngest of whom were born in the 1940s.
[Connell, B. (2002). Aspects of the phonetics of Cambap. Studies in African Linguistics, 31 (1 & 2)]
Classification
Twendi is a
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 ...
belonging to the Mambila group. Speakers consider Twendi to be a dialect of
Kwanja, but lexical evidence from a variety of Mambiloid languages, especially
Kabri, indicates its affinity to the Mambila group.
[Blench, R. M. (1993). An outline classification of the Mambiloid languages. Journal of West African Languages, 23(1), 105-118.]
References
External links
Twendiat EndangeredLanguages.com
Moribund languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland
Mambiloid languages
Languages of Cameroon
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