Papel language

Papel (Pepel, Papei), or Oium (Moium), is a Bak language of Guinea-Bissau.

Papel
Native toGuinea-Bissau, Senegal
EthnicityPapel people
Native speakers
140,000 (2006)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3pbo
Glottologpape1239

Papel is the language spoken by the Papel people, who live in the central coastal regions of Guinea-Bissau, namely the Biombo Region where it is spoken by 136,000 Bissau-Guineans. Papel speakers are estimated to be around 140,000 in total globally.[2]

Papel has 79,000 speakers living on Bissau Island (called (b)uhlawʔ or (b)usawʔ in Papel). Dialects include Biombo (Papel: uyomʔ) in the southwest and Safim (Papel: safli) in the northeast.[3]

Classification

Papel is part of the Bak language family based in the Senegal/Guinea-Bissau region, thus it is linguistically similar to the Mankanya and Mandjak languages, members of the 'Papel languages' a language sub-family. Today, Papel, along with its linguistic neighbours uses Latin-based script.

 
 Bak proper 
 

Balanta

 
 
 

Jola languages (Diola)

 
 

Papel languages

 
 
 
 

Bijago

 
 

References
  1. Papel at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. "Papel". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2016-11-13.
  3. Wilson, William André Auquier. 2007. Guinea Languages of the Atlantic group: description and internal classification. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik, 12.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Further reading


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