Mimi of Decorse, also known as Mimi of Gaudefroy-Demombynes and Mimi-D, is a language of

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

that is attested only in a word list labelled " Mimi" that was collected ca. 1900 by G. J. Decorse and published by

Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes (15 December 1862 – 12 August 1957) was a French Arabist, a specialist in Islam and the history of religions. His best known works are his historical and religious studies on Hajj and Muslim institutions. He also t ...

. Joseph Greenberg (1960) classified it as a

Maban language The Maban languages are a small family of languages which have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan family. Maban languages are spoken in eastern Chad, the Central African Republic and western Sudan ( Darfur). Languages The Maban branch i ...

, like the rather remote Maban relative

Mimi of Nachtigal Mimi of Nachtigal, or Mimi-N, is a language of Chad that is attested only in a word list labelled " Mimi" that was collected ca. 1870 by Gustav Nachtigal. Nachtigal's data was subsequently published by Lukas & Voelckers (1938). Classification J ...

. However, George Starostin (2011) rejects this classification, arguing that similarities to Maban are due to contact with locally dominant Maba (the similarities are with that language specifically, not with the entire Maban family), and provisionally regards it as a language isolate, though it is suggestive of

Central Sudanic Central Sudanic is a family of about sixty languages that have been included in the proposed Nilo-Saharan language family. Central Sudanic languages are spoken in the Central African Republic, Chad, South Sudan, Uganda, Congo (DRC), Nigeria and ...

.Starostin, George
On Mimi
Journal of Language Relationship, v. 6, 2011, pp. 115-140.

Basic vocabulary

The more stable of Mimi-D and Mimi-N's attested vocabulary is as follows:

References

{{Central Sudanic languages Maban languages Languages of Chad Nilo-Saharan languages Language isolates of Africa Languages attested from the 1900s Extinct languages of Africa

Basic vocabulary

See also

References