Introduction

The Mendenkye language is spoken by the people living in Bangolan village, Babessi sub-division, Ngo-Ketunjia Division, North West Region, in the republic of Cameroon, as well as by others from Bangolan who live in the diaspora.

The Atlas Linquistique du Cameroun (Bikoï 2012) lists the language as: Bangolan with the code [992]. The Ethnologue (Eberhard et al. 2024) has Mendenkye as language name, and lists the following as alternate language names: Bangolan, Məndenkie, Songnungbangle (ISO 639-3 language code: bgj). 

This language is classified as: Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Wide Grassfields, Narrow Grassfields, Mbam-Nkam, Nun.

About 1,700 words were collected by Mathaus Njeck between 2002 and 2003 with minor updates to the orthography since then.

There is still much work to do, but we, the compilers have decided to publish this work-in-progress, in order to document the work we have done so far and make it available to the community of speakers. Our ambition is to publish early and often.

Citations:

Bikoï, C. B. (ed.). 2012. Cartographie administrative des langues du Cameroun (Administrative Atlas of Cameroon languages). Yaoundé: Editions du CERDOTOLA.

Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2024. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-seventh edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.