Bak languages


The Bak languages are a group of typologically Atlantic languages of Senegal and Guinea Bissau linked in 2010 to the erstwhile Atlantic isolate Bijago. Bak languages are non-tonal.

Languages

Bijago

Bijago is highly divergent. Sapir classified it as an isolate within West Atlantic. However, Segerer showed that this is primarily due to unrecognized sound changes, and that Bijago is in fact close to the Bak languages. For example, the following cognates in Bijago and Joola Kasa are completely regular, but had not previously been identified:
Segerer reconstructs the ancestral forms as *bu-gof and *di-gɛs, respectively, with the following developments: