Beosi

Beosi
Regions with significant populations
Madagascar
Languages
Malagasy
Related ethnic groups
other Malagasy peoples, not necessarily close to the Mikea

The Beosi are short-statured hunter-gatherers of the central highlands of Madagascar. They are distinct from the Mikea hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists of the lowlands.

Language

(possible substrate language)
Ethnicity Beosi
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog vazi1234[1]

The Boesi speak a dialect of the Malagasy language, which originated in southern Borneo. Speculation that there may be remnants of a Vazimba language in Beosi speech was investigated by Blench & Walsh (2009). Beosi speech was found to have a relatively high proportion of vocabulary that cannot be identified with words in other varieties of Malagasy, substantially more than the Mikea dialect, and is more likely than Mikea to retain a Vazimba substrate, if such a thing even exists. The possibility is complicated by the extensive use of evasive language and cant by the Beosi, which is designed to hinder understanding by outsiders.[2]

Notes

  1. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Vazimba". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. ↑ Blench & Walsh, 2009 draft ms, "The vocabularies of Vazimba and Beosi: do they represent the languages of the pre-Austronesian populations of Madagascar?".
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