Bena-Yungur
Dmitry Idiatov & Mark Van de Velde
Bena-Yungur (glottocode: bena1260), is a language from the Buto group (aka Bena-Mboi). Bena-Yungur is primarily spoken in Song LGA of Adamawa State to the northwest of the state capital Yola. The speakers refer to their language as ẽ́ẽ́ ɓə́nāā ‘the Bena language’. The name Yungur is originally an exonym, but today it is regularly used by the Bena themselves when speaking in other languages. Since speakers of the Laala varieties of the Buto group identify themselves as Bena as well, Kleinewillinghöfer (1993) proposes to use Bena-Yungur as the name of the language, a convention we follow.
We gathered initial data with about ten speakers in the village of Dumne during a pilot study in Adamawa State in 2011. Due to the insecurity in the region, we subsequently invited native speaker consultants to come and work with us in various locations outside of the Bena country. Our main consultants are Bitrus Andrew and (the late) Sabeta Musa Bukta. Our reference dialect for Bena-Yungur is the Pra (pə́ráá) variety of Bena-Yungur as spoken in Dumne.
An overview of basic phonology and morphosyntax of Bena-Yungur can be found in Van de Velde & Idiatov (2017) and Idiatov & Van de Velde (2018). An overview of some interesting phonetic features of Bena-Yungur in relation to its influence on the L2 English as spoken by the Bena-Yungur can be found in Idiatov (2019).
We are happy to present the first version of the Bena-English dictionary app (Idiatov, Van de Velde, Rabier 2021).
References:
- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2019 (published online: 2017). Word-final consonant epenthesis in North-eastern Nigerian English. English Language and Linguistics 23(2):303-340. DOI: 10.1017/S1360674317000429.
- Idiatov, Dmitry. 2023. Neutralization of laryngeal settings of word-final stops in Buto languages. 2nd Adamawa Conference (Paris, France). [slides]
- Idiatov, Dmitry & Mark Van de Velde. 2018. The tone system of Bena-Yungur. In Raija Kramer & Roland Kießling (eds.), Current approaches to Adamawa and Gur languages, 171-191. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
- Idiatov, Dmitry & Mark L.O. Van de Velde. 2020. The internal reconstruction of Bena-Yungur consonants and tone patterns. Language in Africa 1(3). 100–124. DOI: 10.37892/2686-8946-2020-1-3-100-124.
- Idiatov, Dmitry & Mark L.O. Van de Velde, Uyên-To Rabier (programmer). 2021. Bena-English dictionary. Version 1.0. Android 4.4 and up. URL: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.efl.bena. Version [insert the accessed version number here] accessed on [insert date here].
- Kleinewillinghöfer, Ulrich. 1993. Nominalklassen im Mboi und Ɓəna-Lala der Yungur bzw. Ɓəna-Mboi-Gruppe. Afrika und Übersee 76. 3–14.
- Kleinewillinghöfer, Ulrich. 2020. Adamawa. In Rainer Vossen & Gerrit J. Dimmendaal (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of African Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Van de Velde, Mark & Dmitry Idiatov. 2017. Morphological classes and gender in Ɓə́ná-Yungur. In Shigeki Kaji (ed.), Proceedings of the 8th World Congress of African Linguistics, 53–65. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
