Bijago language

Bijago
Native to	Guinea-Bissau
Region	Offshore Bissagos Islands
Native speakers	30,000
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic-Congo Bijago
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bjg

Bijago, or Bidyogo, is the language of the Bissagos Archipelago of Guinea-Bissau. There are some difficulties of grammar and intelligibility between dialects, with the Kamona dialect of Caravela and Carache Islands being unintelligible to the others.

Sapir (1971) classified Bijago as an isolate within the West Atlantic family. Linguists such as Blench who reject the validity of West Atlantic keep Bijago as a separate branch of the Atlantic-Congo core of the Niger-Congo family.

Characteristics

The Kajoko dialect of Bijago is one of the few speech varieties of the world, and the only one outside of Vanuatu, known to use a linguolabial consonant in its basic sound system (Olson et al. in press).

References

• Olson, Kenneth S., D. William Reiman, Fernando Sabio & Filipe Alberto da Silva. In press. The voiced linguolabial plosive in Kajoko. Chicago Linguistic Society (CLS) 45(1).
• Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo. Oxford : Pergamon Press, 1997.
• Segerer, Guillaume. Lʼorigine des Bijogo : hypothèses de linguiste. In Gaillard, Gérald (Ed), Migrations anciennes et peuplement actuel des Côtes guinéennes, Paris : LʼHarmattan, 2000, pp. 183-191
• Segerer, Guillaume. La langue bijogo de Bubaque (Guinée Bissau). Louvain, Paris : Editions Peeters, 2002. 310 pp.