Duala language

Douala
Native to Cameroon
Ethnicity Douala, Mungo
Native speakers
 (90,000 cited 1982)[1]
2 million L1 and L2 speakers in Douala (2013)
Dialects
  • Duala proper
  • Bodiman
  • Oli (Ewodi, Wuri)
  • Pongo
  • Mongo (Muungo)
Language codes
ISO 639-2 dua
ISO 639-3 dua
Glottolog dual1243[2]
A.24–26[3]
Jo
Native to Cameroon
Region around Douala
Native speakers
 None
Douala-based pidgin
Language codes
ISO 639-3 None (mis)
Glottolog None
A.20A[3]

Duala (also spelt Douala, Diwala, Dwela, Dualla and Dwala) is a dialect cluster spoken by the Duala and Mungo peoples of Cameroon. Douala belongs to the Bantu language family, in a subgroup called Sawabantu. Maho (2009) treats Douala as a cluster of five languages: Douala proper, Bodiman, Oli (Ewodi, Wuri), Pongo and Mongo. He also notes a Douala-based pidgin named Jo.

The song "Soul Makossa", as well as pop songs that repeated its lyrics, internationally popularised the Duala word for "(I) dance", "makossa".[4] The song Alane by artist Wes Madiko is sung in Duala and reached #1 position in over 9 European countries.

Dictionaries

  1. E. Dinkelacker, Wörterbuch der Duala-Sprache, Hamburg, 1914.
  2. Paul Helmlinger, Dictionnaire duala-français, suivi d'un lexique français-duala. Editions Klincksieck, Paris, 1972.
  3. Johannes Ittmann, edited by E. Kähler-Meyer, Wörterbuch der Duala-Sprache, Dictionnaire de la langue duala, Dictionary of the Duala Language, Dietrich Reimer, Berlin, 1976. The preface evaluates ref. 1 above as terse, but good, while ref. 2 has missing and erroneous tone marks.

References

  1. ↑ Douala at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Duala". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. 1 2 Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  4. ↑ "TRANS Nr. 13: George Echu (Yaounde): Multilingualism as a Resource: the Lexical Appropriation of Cameroon Indigenous Languages by English and French". Inst.at. Retrieved 2017-07-06.


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