Bima language
| Bima | |
|---|---|
| Nggahi Mbojo | |
| Region | Sumbawa |
Native speakers | (500,000 cited 1989)[1] |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin, Mbojo | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bhp |
| Glottolog | bima1247 |
| ELP | Bima |
The Bima language, or Bimanese (Bima: Nggahi Mbojo, Malay: Bahasa Bima) is an Austronesian language spoken on the eastern half of Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, which it shares with speakers of the Sumbawa language. Bima territory includes the Sanggar Peninsula, where the extinct Papuan language Tambora was once spoken. "Bima" is an exonym; the autochthonous name for the territory is "Mbojo" and the language is referred to as "Nggahi Mbojo." It is closely related to the languages of Sumba Island to the southeast. There are over half a million Bima speakers. Neither the Bima nor the Sumbawa people have alphabets of their own for they use the alphabets of the Bugis and the Malay language indifferently.[2]
References
- ^ Bima at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ James Cowles Prichard (1874). Researches into the Physical History of Mankind Volume 5: Containing Researches Into the History of the Oceanic and of the American Nations. Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper. ASIN B0041T3N9G.
External links
- Paradisec has a collection of open access recordings of Bima from a 2005 language documentation class, as well as some recordings from Robert Blust.
- Kaipuleohone also has an open-access collection of Robert Blust's materials including a recording of Bima.
.jpg){kind=small} | This Austronesian languages-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |