Manenguba languages
[3] The people speaking the various Manenguba languages belong to the following tribes or nations: Mienge, Mbo, Basossi, Bakossi, Elung, Nninong, Mousmenam, Manengouba, Bareko, Manehas, Bakaka, Balondo, Babong and Bafun.
[14] In the Western Cluster, most of the languages are also closely related, although Mbo of Ekanang, situated on the north-east side of the mountain, stands slightly apart from the others.
[15] According to Hedinger (1987), the Bafaw-Balong language included in Guthrie zone A.15 for cultural reasons needs to be excluded from Manenguba on linguistic grounds; Maho (2009) separates it as A.141.
[18] The first European record of a Manenguba language was made by Hannah Kilham, a teacher from Yorkshire who taught in Sierra Leone, in 1828.
[20] A more extensive record of 280 Manenguba words and phrases, in three different dialects, was made by the German missionary Sigismund Koelle working in Sierra Leone, and published as part of his work Polyglotta Africana in 1854.
He called the language itself Mokō, like Hannah Kilham, and the three dialects Ngoteng, Melong, and Nhālemōe.
[21] The first descriptive grammar of a Manenguba language was made by the German missionary Heinrich Dorsch, who published a Grammatik der Nkosi-Sprache in 1910/11, as well as German-Nkosi and Nkosi-German vocabularies.
[27] This stop is still preserved in Mbo, Mkaa' and Belon, but has become /ⁿz/ in Akoose and most of the other Manenguba languages.
[31] In Hedinger (2016), the long vowels are written double: "ii ee ɛɛ aa əə ɔɔ oo uu".
These are written á, a, ă, and â respectively, or in long vowels áá, aa, aá, and áa.
[33] Syllabic m and n can sometimes carry a tone, for example Akoose ḿmem "my" (classes 3, 4, 6), ńhal "speckled mouse-bird".
In some words there is also downstep in which in a sequence H H, the second H is slightly lower than the first, probably because historically an intervening L syllable was absorbed or dropped.
In a long vowel, H and downstepped H can make a contour tone, for example Akɔ́ɔ̄sē "Akoose language".
In Akoose, the infinitive has the prefix a- or â-: âbom "to meet", âwɔ́g (or awɔ́g) "to wash"; this takes concords of class 5 nouns.
[41] Finite forms of the verb have a prefix indicating the person "I, you (sg), he/she, we, you (pl), they" or agreeing with the noun-class of the subject.
Akoose also has a logophoric verbal prefix mə́- "he/she/you" used in indirect speech in sentences such as the following: The use of mə́- rather than a- makes it clear that the second "he" refers to the speaker, not another person.
However, when the head noun is the subject of the relative clause (e.g. "the man who did the work"), the independent form of the verb is used.
Negative verbs are expressed by adding a high-toned suffix, usually -á (Mwaneka) or -ɛ́ (Akoose).
