Mungbam is a Southern Bantoid language of the Lower Fungom region of Cameroon.
[2] Good et al. uses a more accurate name, the 'Yemne-Kimbi group,' but proposes the term 'Beboid.
'[3] The language is spoken in four villages, Abar, Munken, Ngun, and Biya (formerly known as 'Za''[4]).
Speakers from each village consider their speech to be distinct, but the dialects are loosely classified as one language because they heavily overlap in grammar and vocabulary and are mutually intelligible.
Speakers from the four villages plus Missong regularly interact with each other in markets, at school, and during celebrations.
The language is spoken by approximately 2,000 speakers across the villages, by some young people and all adults.
Very few words begin with vowels in Mungbam; these are primarily restricted to lexical nouns, some pronouns, and some grammatical particles.
[19] Non-stem initial syllables are exclusively CV in shape, almost entirely predictable in terms of tone, and have a very restricted set of possible consonants.
[20] Affixation, typically the most common morphological process, is very minimal in Mungbam.
Affixation is restricted primarily to prefixes, with semi-rare circumfixes, and few suffixes.
The most common concordant affixation is that of noun-class prefixes to word stems.
[22] Mungbam morphological inflection mainly comprises tone shift, reduplication, nominalization through affixation, and some rare cases of ablaut.
Extension is a morphological process wherein the stem vowel of a noun is lengthened, changing the tone.
[5] Consecutive verbs in the Missong dialect can experience tone sandhi.
[5] ŋ̀-kə̀mCL1.NMLZ2-break-kûsəlegŋ̀-kə̀m -kûsəCL1.NMLZ2-break leg'amputee'[31]Here, the verb 'break' has been nominalized as part of the noun phrase 'broken leg' which translates more closely into 'amputee.
'[31] Verbs undergo ablaut to denote changes in aspect (perfective and imperfective).
Unlike Indo-European systems, noun-class can be linked to number, gender, or abstraction (i.e., the plural form of a noun may belong to one class, while the singular form belongs to another class).
It involves lengthening of the tone and, sometimes, the vowel, when the noun is next to a possessive pronoun or particle.