Bikya language
Encyclopedia
Bikya is a Bantoid language
isolate spoken in Cameroon
. It is unknown if this language is still existent. In 1986 four surviving speakers were identified, although only one (a man in his seventies) spoke the language fluently.
Bikya is probably best known for the work of English linguist Dr. David Dalby who filmed an 87-year-old African woman who spoke Bikya as her native tongue. It was thought that she was the last speaker, but Kiessling (2007) reports that Bikya has the largest number of remaining speakers of the Furu languages.
It, and presumably all of Furu, is perhaps a Beboid language (Blench 2011).
Bantoid languages
In the classification of African languages, Bantoid is a branch of the Benue–Congo subfamily of the Niger–Congo phylum. The term 'Bantoid' was first used by Krause in 1895 for languages that showed resemblances in vocabulary to Bantu...
isolate spoken in Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...
. It is unknown if this language is still existent. In 1986 four surviving speakers were identified, although only one (a man in his seventies) spoke the language fluently.
Bikya is probably best known for the work of English linguist Dr. David Dalby who filmed an 87-year-old African woman who spoke Bikya as her native tongue. It was thought that she was the last speaker, but Kiessling (2007) reports that Bikya has the largest number of remaining speakers of the Furu languages.
It, and presumably all of Furu, is perhaps a Beboid language (Blench 2011).