A Phonology of Limbum-Limbum is the language spoken by the Wimbum people, who live in Donga-Mantung Division of the Northwest Province of Cameroun. It is in the area comprising most of the Northwest Province and the Western Province which is often referred to as the 'Bamenda Grassfields' . In Limbum, /li/ means 'language', and /we:-/ is a prefix meaning 'people', so Limbum means Mbum language, and Wimbum means Mbum people.
This is not to be confused with the Bum language, which is spoken at a short distance to the west of the Wimbum area, although the names could have a common origin. The Mbum people, who live north of Ngaoundere, however, may be the ethnic group from which the Wimbum originate. This is discussed further below. Their Mbum language is not related to Limbum, but, according to Shun'ya Hino (1978:vii), belongs to Greenberg's Adamawa-Eastern sub-family of Niger-Congo.
The Wimbum and their language have often been referred to by outsiders as Nsungli, which is an anglicized version of a name given them by their neighbors to the south, the NsnV.
The word in Lamnsn? means 'talkers' or 'speakers'.

Classification

The area in which Limbum is spoken lies to the northwest of Malcolm Guthrie's (1967) Zone A Bantu. He did not consider the languages of eastern Nigeria and western Cameroon which are related to Limbum to be Bantu, but referred to them as 'Bantoid' (Watters 1980:99). Using Guthrie's system of classification, Richardson (1957:46) places Limbum in the NKDM group of Bantoid languages.
Previously, Johnson (1919) had labeled these languages 'Semi-Bantu'. The reason they were not included in strict Bantu was that although they had certain Bantu-like characteristics, such as cognate roots and noun class systems with similar morphology, there were differences, such as unclear sound correspondences and noun class irregularities which seemed to rule out the claim for a genetic relationship to Bantu. Instead, Johnson and Guthrie attributed the Bantu-like characteristics to massive borrowing from Bantu (Watters 1980:99).

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