Oblo is a poorly attested, unclassified, and possibly extinct language of northern
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 ...
. It is, or was, spoken in a tiny area including Gobtikéré, Ouro Bé, and Ouro Badjouma, in
Pitoa,
Bénoué Department.
Eldridge Mohammadou located Olbo around Bé, at the confluence of the
Benue River
Benue River (), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is a major tributary of the Niger River. The size of its catchment basin is 319,000 km2 (123,000 sq mi). Almost its entire length of Approximation, approximately is navigable dur ...
and
Kebi River, in
Bibemi commune.
[Ayotte, Michael and Charlene Ayotte. 2002. ]
Sociolinguistic Language Survey of Dama, Mono, Pam, Ndai, and Oblo
'. SIL International. However, ''ALCAM'' (2012), following ''Ethnologue'', reports that Oblo was spoken near
Tcholliré in
Mayo-Rey department, Northern Region.
Oblo is known only from eight words collected by Kurt Strümpell in the early 1900s.
Oblo has been classified as one of the
Adamawa languages
The Adamawa languages are a putative family of 80–90 languages scattered across the Adamawa Plateau in Central Africa, in northern Cameroon, north-western Central African Republic, southern Chad, and eastern Nigeria, spoken altogether by on ...
, but it has not been included in recent classifications.
It might be best left unclassified altogether.
"Towards a new classification of African languages"
''Linguistic Contribution to the History of Sub-Saharan Africa,'' University of Lyons
Further reading
*Mohammadou, Eldridge. 1983. Peuples et Royaumes du Foumbina. In ''African Languages and Ethnography XVII''. Morimichi Tomikawa, ed. Japan: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
*Mohammadou, Eldridge. 1979. ''Les Yillaga de la Bénoué: Ray ou Rey-Bouba''. Paris: CNRS.
*Mohammadou, Eldridge. 1980. ''Garoua: Tradition historique d’une cité peule du Nord-Cameroun''. Paris: CNRS.
*Mohammadou, Eldridge. 1983. ''Peuples et Etats du Foumbina et de l’Adamawa''. (Traduction d’études par K. Strümpell et von Briesen). Yaoundé.
*Strümpell, Kurt, and Bernard Struck. 1910. “Vergleichendes Wörterverzeichnis der Heidensprachen Adamauas”. ''Zeitschrift für Ethnologie'' 42 (314):444–448. (“Vocabulairecomparé des langues des païens de l’Adamaoua”)
*Struempell, Kurt. 1912. “Die Geschichte Adamauas nach mündlichen Ueberlieferungen”. ''Mitt. Geogr. Gesellschaft in Hamburg'' 26:46–107.
References
{{Languages of Cameroon
Adamawa languages
Unclassified languages of Africa
Languages of Cameroon