Traditional dance of Wimbum, around 1990 in dry season Nkambe-town
The Wimbum consist of three clans: War clan headquartered at Mbot, Tang clan at Tallah, and Wiya clan atNdu.[3] Scattered around the area are other Wimbum villages, each associated with one of the three clans. Each village has a chief, also known asfon, who is largely autonomous, and beneath him sub-chiefs or quarter-heads.[4] The three clans are geographically interspersed, sharing the language.[3] The people live on the Nkambe Plateau, a dramatic grassy highland cut by wooded ravines, about a mile above sea level.[5] Most are farmers, growingmaize,beans,potatoes,yams, vegetable,tomatoes,bananas, and alsoplantains andcoffee in lower, warmer areas.[6][7] Some conduct trade, primarily in the towns ofNkambé andNdu. Some work for the government, primarily inNkambe.
Some linguists consider Limbum to have three dialects: a northern, a middle, and a southern dialect. Speakers of one dialect can generally understand speakers of any other. The three dialects cut across the three clans, and may result from influence of the neighboring languages to the north and south.[8] Limbum is closely related to some neighboring languages likeYamba and more geographically distant ones likeBamum,Ngemba andBamileke. It is quite different from some other neighboring languages likeBebe andNoni.[9]
But Limbum differs from English in other ways. Here are a few:
Limbum is atone language, meaning that spoken pitch can distinguish words which otherwise sound the same. For example, the sound "baa" spoken with different tones can meanfather,fufu,two,bag,part in hair, ormadness.[13]
The pronoun system is quite different. For example, "ye" is a gender-neutral thirdperson singular, taking the place ofhe andshe in English. In second person, "wɛ᷅" meansyou(singular), "we᷅e" meansyou(plural) and not I, "so᷅" meansyou(singular) and I, and "se᷅e" means(you(singular) and we) or (you(plural) and I). Also, Limbum has compound pronouns, which English lacks.[14]
Adjectives tend tofollow the noun they modify, and may berepeated for emphasis. E.g. "e ye biboŋ" means "he-or-she eatskolanutgood," and "e ye biboŋboŋ" means "he-or-she eats kolanutvery-good".[15]
Yes–no questions are formed simply by appending the worda to a statement, as in "Ndi a᷅ du a?", meaning "Ndi has gone, is-it-so?" word-for-word - much less confusing than English's subject-verb inversions.[16] Negation is grammatically similar.[17]
Limbum's five prepositions don't align with English prepositions much at all:
ni: marker of direction, accompaniment or instrument, like "to him" or "with him" in English.
mbe: marker of location, like "in the house" or "on the chair."
mba: marker of a direction or location at a lower elevation, like "down-to Tabenken valley."
ko: marker of a direction or location at a higher elevation, like "up-to Ndu."
nje: marker of direction, location or provenance, like "at school" or "from Douala."[18]
^Tabah Nforgwei, Samuel (2004).A Study of the Phonological, Morphological and Syntactic Processes in the Standardisation of Limbum. Université de Yaoundé.
^Ndi, Francis Wepngong (2017).Limbum grammar sketch.
"Nkambe".United Councils and Cities of Cameroon. Archived fromthe original on 2017-05-17. Retrieved2023-12-15.
Pool, Robert (1994).Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness: Conversations in a Cameroon Village. Explorations in Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 33.ISBN1859730167.OCLC28111846.
