The Noni language, also called Noone, is an

Eastern Beboid language The Beboid languages are any of several groups of languages spoken principally in southwest Cameroon, although two languages (Bukwen and Mashi) are spoken over the border in Nigeria. They are probably not most closely related to each other. The E ...

of the Niger–Congo family in

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 ...

. The Noone, Ncane, and Mungong varieties are sometimes considered three distinct Noni languages. ''Ethnologue'' reports that Ncare is 88% lexically similar with Noone, and 84% with

Saari Saari means ''island'' in Finnish and may refer to * Saari (name) *Saari, Finland, a former municipality * Saari, Estonia, a village *Saari language in Cameroon * Tarujen Saari, a Finnish folk-rock group *''Saari Bhool Hamari Thi ''Saari Bhool ...

(Nsari). Noni is the

native language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

to 40,000 people in the country, particularly in the

North West Province North West is a province of South Africa. Its capital is Mahikeng. The province is located to the west of the major population centre of Gauteng and south of Botswana. History North West was incorporated after the end of Apartheid in 1994, an ...

, the Bui Division and the northwest

Kumbo Kumbo, also known as Kimbo, is the second-largest city in the North West Province of Cameroon and the capital of Bui Division. It lies about 2000m above sea level and is situated approximately 110 km away from Bamenda (the provincial capital ...

Subdivision. Noone proper was used as the secret language in Indiana Jones.

References

Relevant literature

*Boutwell, Richard. 2020. ''A grammar of Nchane: A Bantoid (Beboid) language of Cameroon.'
University of Leiden: PhD dissertation.
* Hyman, Larry M. 1980. Noni (Misaje group). L’expansion bantou. Paris: SELAF (no. special 9), 259–274. *Hyman, Larry M. 1981. Noni grammatical structure, with special reference to verb morphology. Southern California: Occasional Papers in Linguistics 9. Los Angeles: University of Southern California. *Lux, David 2003. Noni provisional lexicon. ms. Yaoundé: SIL *Richards, Russell M. 1991. Phonologie de trois langues beboides du Cameroun: Noone, Ncanti et Sari. Thèse pour le doctorat (Arrête du 23 Novembre 1988), Livres I. et II. Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III. Beboid languages Languages of Cameroon {{SBantoid-lang-stub