Kwasio language


The Kwasio language, also known as Ngumba / Mvumbo, Bujeba, and Gyele / Kola, is a language of Cameroon, spoken in the south along the coast and at the border with Equatorial Guinea by some 70,000 members of the Ngumba, Kwasio, Gyele and Mabi peoples. Many authors view Kwasio and the Gyele/Kola language as distinct. In the Ethnologue, the languages therefore receive different codes: Kwasio has the ISO 639-3 code nmg, while Gyele has the code gyi. The Kwasio, Ngumba, and Mabi are village farmers; the Gyele are nomadic Pygmy hunter-gatherers living in the rain forest.

Dialects

Dialects are Kwasio, Mvumbo, and Mabi.
The Gyele speak the subdialects of Mvumbo and Gyele in the north Giele, Gieli, Gyeli, Bagiele, Bagyele, Bagielli, Bajele, Bajeli, Bogyel, Bogyeli, Bondjiel.
In the south, the Gyele speak Kola, also known as Koya, in the south, also spelled as Likoya, Bako, Bakola, Bakuele, also Bekoe. The local derogatory term for pygmies, Babinga, is also used.
Glottolog adds Shiwa.

Features

Like the other Niger-Congo languages of Cameroon, Kwasio is a tonal language.
As a Bantu language, it has noun class system. The Kwasio noun class system is somewhat reduced, having retained only 6 genders.