Mmen (Bafmeng) is a

Grassfields Bantu language The Grassfields languages (or Wide Grassfields languages) are a branch of the Southern Bantoid languages spoken in the Western High Plateau of Cameroon and some parts of Taraba state, Nigeria. Better known Grassfields languages include the Easter ...

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 ...

. As a Centre Ring language of Narrow Grassfields, a subdivision of Wide Grassfields within the Southern Bantoid languages, Mmen is part of a cluster including six other languages i.e. Babanki, Bum, Kom, Kuk, Kung and Oku (Lewis 2009).

Etymology

The name Mmen ( ɛn comes from the verb sé mwɛ̀yn émɣɛ̀yn‘to open up thick bush-covered land’ and is used by the speakers referring to both their language and their land. Ethnologue (Lewis 2009) and ALCAM, Atlas Linguistique du Cameroon (Dieu and Renaud 1983) use the name and spelling Mmen. Bafumen is the name of the village where the largest number of speakers is found i.e. 30 000 (Troyer, et al. 1995:8) and the name adopted by German colonizers for the area and formerly used for the language. Other villages where Mmen is spoken are Cha’, Yemgeh, Nyos, Ipalim among others.

Consonants

Mmen has 27 phonemic consonants.

Vowels

Monophthongs

Mmen has 9 phonemic monophthongs.

Diphthongs

Mmen also has six phonemic diphthongs, all ending in .

Tone

Mmen has 9 phonemic tones. There are three level tones (high, mid, and low) and six contour tones (high-low, high-mid, mid-low, mid-high, low-mid, and low-falling).

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * Ring languages Languages of Cameroon {{gras-lang-stub