Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 23, 2026

Bung language

The Bung language is a moribund language of Cameroon spoken by three people at the village of Boung on the Adamawa Plateau. It is remembered best by one speaker who learned the language at a young age, though it is not his mother tongue. A wordlist shows its strongest resemblance to be with the Ndung dialect of Mambiloid language Kwanja, although that may simply be because this has become the dominant language of the village where Bung's last speakers reside. It also has words in common with other Mambiloid languages such as Tep, Somyev and Vute, while a number of words' origins remain unclear. For lack of data, it is not definitively classified.

Last revised
Jul 23, 2026
Read time
≈ 1 min
Length
165 w
Citations
4
Source
Bung
Native toCameroon
RegionAdamawa Province
Extinct1970s1
Language codes
ISO 639-3bqd
Glottologbung1259
ELPBung

The Bung language is a moribund language of Cameroon spoken by three people (in 1995) at the village of Boung on the Adamawa Plateau.2 It is remembered best by one speaker who learned the language at a young age, though it is not his mother tongue. A wordlist shows its strongest resemblance to be with the Ndung dialect of Mambiloid language Kwanja, although that may simply be because this has become the dominant language of the village where Bung's last speakers reside.2 It also has words in common with other Mambiloid languages such as Tep, Somyev and Vute, while a number of words' origins remain unclear (possibly Adamawan).2 For lack of data, it is not definitively classified.

References

References

  1. "Bung". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 2019-06-06. Retrieved 2026-05-29. Last speaker probably died in the 1970s.
  2. Bruce Connell, 1997: Moribund Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroon Borderland Archived 2004-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
External links
  • The Endangered Languages Project: Bung