Mvanip language

Mvanip (Mvano), or Magu, is a minor Mambiloid language of Nigeria. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous. Ethnologue classifies Mvanip as threatened.[3]

Mvanip
Mvano
Magu
Native toNigeria
RegionTaraba State
Native speakers
100 (1999)[1]
Niger–Congo
Language codes
ISO 639-3mcj
Glottologmvan1238[2]

General information

As of 1964, Mvanip had 800 speakers in and around the town of Zongo Ajiya, which is located on the Mambila Plateau in Nigeria.[4] By 1999, however, the language was only spoken by about 100 speakers. Despite this, all of the children of Mvanip speakers still speak the language, meaning that it is still alive. Fulfulde, Mambila, and Ndoro are also spoken in Zongo Ajiya.[5]

Many confuse Mvanip with the Kaka language, which is spoken in the southeastern Nigeria and the adjacent areas in Cameroon.[6] Despite the confusion, these two languages are unrelated.

The most closely related language is Ndunda, which is also located on the Mambila Plateau.[5] Some other languages Mvanip is related to are Fam, Nizaa, Kwanja, Mambila, Vute and Wawa, which all evolved from proto-Mambiloid.[6]

Phonology

While not much information exists about the phonology of Mvanip itself, there is information about the phonology of its related languages.

For example, labialisation is used extensively in both Kwanja and Nizaa, two other Mambiloid Languages. Vowel merger in languages such as Mambila suggest that Mvanip most likely also has less vowels than their common ancestor, proto-Mambiloid. It is unclear whether any vowels or consonants are nasalised in Mvanip, as some of its relatives have nasalised sounds and some do not.

All Mambiloid languages seem to have very complex tonal systems. For example, Vute, Kwanja, Atta and Gembu Mambila all have a variety of level and glide tones that are incorporated into the speech. Mambiloid languages also have noun affix systems.[6]

gollark: Ah, so they're just magicking it and it's not a problem according to you, I ße.
gollark: Computing those significantly in advance probably requires computing basically the entire state of the world, while as a person who presumably actually exists in said world you can just look them up.
gollark: You can annoy the predictor and make them need more CPU time by basing your prediction on facts like "what is the least significant bit of the latest block on the bitcoin blockchain" and "what is the value of [SOME STOCK MARKET PARAMETER]", depending on how early they fill the boxoids.
gollark: Regardless of what choice you make, the contents of the boxes are fixed, thus pick mildly more money. This probably sounds unsmart to you, which is either because you (and the server generally) are/is right, or because you fell into one side and now think it's obvious.
gollark: As I said, in general apparently both sides are split pretty evenly, have fairly convincing arguments each way, and both think that their answer is obvious and the other is wrong.

References
  1. Mvanip at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mvano". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. "Mvanip". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2016-04-29.
  4. "Languages of the World: African Fascicle One on JSTOR". JSTOR 30022465. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. Blench, R. (2012). An atlas of Nigerian languages.
  6. Blench, Roger (1993). "An Outline Classification of the Mambiloid Languages" (PDF). Journal of West African Languages.
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