Bijago or Bidyogo is the language of the
Bissagos Archipelago
The Bissagos Islands, also spelled Bijagós ( pt, Arquipélago dos Bijagós), are a group of about 88 islands and islets located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Guinea-Bissau. The archipelago was formed from the ancient delta of the Geb ...
of
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau ( ; pt, Guiné-Bissau; ff, italic=no, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫 𞤄𞤭𞤧𞤢𞥄𞤱𞤮, Gine-Bisaawo, script=Adlm; Mandinka: ''Gine-Bisawo''), officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( pt, República da Guiné-Bissau, links=no ), ...
. There are some difficulties of grammar and intelligibility between dialects, with the Kamona dialect being unintelligible to the others.
Dialects are as follows:
* Anhaki on Canhabaque (
Roxa
Roxa
in the Catalogue of Islands at Bubaque
Bubaque is one of the Bijagós Islands in Guinea-Bissau, and is also the name of its main town. The island has a population of 6,427, the town Bubaque 4,299 (2009 census). The area of the island is 75 km2, it is 13.6 km long and 8&nbs ...
Island
* Kajoko on
Orango
Orango is one of the Bijagós Islands, located off the coast of mainland Guinea-Bissau. At , it is the largest island in the archipelago. The island has a population of 1,250 (2009 census); the largest village is Eticoga. and
Uno Islands.
* Kamona on the northern
Caravela
Caravela is the northernmost island of the Bissagos Islands of Guinea-Bissau, part of the Sector of Caravela, which also includes the islands Carache, Maio, Ponta and Formosa. The population of the sector is 4,263, the population of the island is ...
and
Carache
Carache is an island in the northwestern part of the Bissagos Islands group, Guinea-Bissau. It belongs to the Bolama Region and the sector of Caravela
Caravela is the northernmost island of the Bissagos Islands of Guinea-Bissau, part of the Sec ...
Islands
Characteristics
The Kajoko dialect is one of the few in the world known to use a
linguolabial consonant
Linguolabials or apicolabials are consonants articulated by placing the tongue tip or blade against the upper lip, which is drawn downward to meet the tongue. They represent one extreme of a coronal articulatory continuum which extends from ling ...
, the voiced stop , in its basic sound system (Olson et al. 2009).
Classification
Bijago is highly divergent. Sapir (1971) classified it as an isolate within the
West Atlantic family. However, Segerer showed that this is primarily due to unrecognized sound changes, and that Bijago is in fact close to the
Bak languages. For example, the following cognates in Bijago and
Joola Kasa (a Bak language) are completely regular, but had not previously been identified (Segerer 2010):
See also
*
Bijogo word list (Wiktionary)
References
* Olson, Kenneth S., D. William Reiman, Fernando Sabio & Filipe Alberto da Silva. 2009. The voiced linguolabial plosive in Kajoko. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 45(1), 519-530.
* Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo. Oxford : Pergamon Press, 1997.
* Segerer, Guillaume. Lʼorigine des Bijogo : hypothèses de linguiste. In Gaillard, Gérald (Ed), Migrations anciennes et peuplement actuel des Côtes guinéennes, Paris : LʼHarmattan, 2000, pp. 183–191
* Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo de Bubaque (Guinée Bissau). Louvain, Paris : Editions Peeters, 2002. 310 pp.
* Guillaume Segerer & Florian Lionnet 2010. "'Isolates' in 'Atlantic'". ''Language Isolates in Africa'' workshop, Lyon, Dec. 4
{{authority control
Bak languages
Languages of Guinea-Bissau