The Noni language, also called Noone, is an Eastern Beboid language of the Niger–Congo family in

Cameroon Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the R ...

. 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'', a 2013 Pakistani d ...

(Nsari). Noni is the

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

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 and province of Gauteng and south of Botswana. History North West was incorporated after the end of ...

, the Bui Division and the northwest

Kumbo Kumbo, also known as Kimbo, is the second-largest city in the Northwest Province, Cameroon, North West Province of Cameroon and the capital of Bui (Cameroon department), Bui Division. It lies about 2000m above sea level and is situated approximate ...

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