Dogon and Bangime Linguistics


Stefan Elders (Dec. 2007)	Abbie Hantgan with Bangime assistant (2009)

Bangime

Bangime (=Bangeri Me) is an apparent language isolate with no demonstrated genetic relatives. It is of great potential interest to African linguistics as a possible pre-Niger-Congo remnant similar to Basque in Europe. It is spoken in a small cluster of villages (the largest being Bounou) that are located in a canyon in the inselbergs northeast of Mopti-Sevare. The nearest market towns on the highway from Mopti to Gao are the villages of Sambere (market on Sunday) and Kona (market on Thursday).

While the existence of a very distinctive "Dogon" language in this village cluster has been known for some time, Roger Blench deserves credit for visiting the area and making his information, including a short lexicon and a literature review, available to scholars on his website.

http://www.rogerblench.info/Language%20data/Isolates/Bangime%20wordlist%20paper.pdf

Blench gives the coordinates for Bounou as N 14:47:50 x W 3:45:40.

Intensive study of Bangime was begun by Dutch linguist Stefan Elders in September 2006 as part of this Dogon project. He died tragically in Mali after a brief illness on February 19 2007. At the age of 41 he had already built an important career as a West Africanist, and this was a great loss to the field as well as to our project.

Indiana U Linguistics Grad student Abbie Hantgan resumed work on Bangime, again as part of this Dogon project, with a stay in Bounou during summer 2008. She received additional support from Indiana University. She plans to continue the research over the next few years, while also working on Najamba-Kindige-Bondu, a Dogon language.

Below are links to Abbie's working drafts, and to materials we were able to salvage from Stefan's fieldwork.

Dogon and Bangime Linguistics

Bangime

Abbie Hantgan:

Stefan Elders: