The Wimbum consist of three clans: War clan headquartered at Mbot, Tang clan at Tallah, and Wiya clan at
Ndu.[3] Scattered around the area are other Wimbum villages, each associated with one of the three clans. Each village has a chief, also known as
fon, who is largely autonomous, and beneath him sub-chiefs or quarter-heads.[4] The three clans are geographically interspersed, sharing the language.[3] The people live on the Nkambe Plateau, a dramatic grassy highland cut by wooded ravines, about a mile above sea level.[5] Most are farmers, growing
maize,
beans,
potatoes,
yams, vegetable,
tomatoes,
bananas, and also
plantains and
coffee in lower, warmer areas.[6][7] Some conduct trade, primarily in the towns of
Nkambé and
Ndu. Some work for the government, primarily in
Nkambe.
Some linguists consider Limbum to have three dialects: a northern, a middle, and a southern dialect. Speakers of one dialect can generally understand speakers of any other. The three dialects cut across the three clans, and may result from influence of the neighboring languages to the north and south.[8] Limbum is closely related to some neighboring languages like
Yamba and more geographically distant ones like
Bamum,
Ngemba and
Bamileke. It is quite different from some other neighboring languages like
Bebe and
Noni.[9]
Grammar
Limbum's grammar is similar to English in some ways, including:
But Limbum differs from English in other ways. Here are a few:
Limbum is a
tone language, meaning that spoken pitch can distinguish words which otherwise sound the same. For example, the sound "baa" spoken with different tones can mean father, fufu, two, bag, part in hair, or madness.[13]
The pronoun system is quite different. For example, "ye" is a gender-neutral third
person singular, taking the place of he and she in English. In second person, "wɛ᷅" means you(singular), "we᷅e" means you(plural) and not I, "so᷅" means you(singular) and I, and "se᷅e" means (you(singular) and we) or (you(plural) and I). Also, Limbum has compound pronouns, which English lacks.[14]
Adjectives tend to follow the noun they modify, and may be
repeated for emphasis. E.g. "e ye bi boŋ" means "he-or-she eats
kolanutgood," and "e ye bi boŋboŋ" means "he-or-she eats kolanut very-good".[15]
Yes–no questions are formed simply by appending the word a to a statement, as in "Ndi a᷅ du a?", meaning "Ndi has gone, is-it-so?" word-for-word - much less confusing than English's subject-verb inversions.[16] Negation is grammatically similar.[17]
Limbum's five prepositions don't align with English prepositions much at all:
ni: marker of direction, accompaniment or instrument, like "to him" or "with him" in English.
mbe: marker of location, like "in the house" or "on the chair."
mba: marker of a direction or location at a lower elevation, like "down-to Tabenken valley."
ko: marker of a direction or location at a higher elevation, like "up-to Ndu."
nje: marker of direction, location or provenance, like "at school" or "from Douala."[18]
"Nkambe". United Councils and Cities of Cameroon. Archived from
the original on 2017-05-17. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
Pool, Robert (1994). Dialogue and the Interpretation of Illness: Conversations in a Cameroon Village. Explorations in Anthropology. Oxford: Berg Publishers. p. 33.
ISBN1859730167.
OCLC28111846.