Ngiemboon is a Bantu language of the "Savanah", spoken in the Bamboutos Department, especially in the Bangang, Batcham, Balatchi and Bamougong Groupements, the Batang Chieftain in the Bamete Groupment in the Menoua Department, principally in the Balessing Groupment. Ces groupements covers an area of more than 260 kilometers2, with an estimated population over 250,000 inhabitants. It is a dynamic, resourceful and courageous group that has attemted to preserve the language. that is daily used by a lesser proportion due to the young people living in a multilingual context with dominant foreign languages.
It was over 20 years ago when this language preservation project began. We started with the French-Ngyemboon Lexicon (preliminary version, Anderson, 1980b) It seemed that the 1,500 entries were insufficient for this language. We realized that the lexicon did not provide Ngyemboon speakers and communicators (radio and others) with a reference document with for orthography and word definitions. It seemed necessary to develop this Ngiemboon-French-English Dictionary to remedy this lack.
Since 1995, after the reprise of the Ngiemboon literacy course in 1994, we have begun to collect vocabulary for the Ngiemboon dictionary. First we combed through existing literature, then we listened to oral discourse of mother-tongue speakers of Ngiemboon, and asked them questions regarding the idioms, and the names of objects, animals and plants. Then in 2000, after the merging the French-Ngyembɔɔn Lexicon (Anderson, 1980b) with the results of our research, we ended up with over 5000 entries.
In order to improve our methods of word collection and data management, we participated in two sessions of the lexicography workshop using "Shoebox" (software for dictionary databases) organized by SIL Cameroon in April 2001 and in May 2002. During these two workshops, each two weeks long, we were equipped with techniques for structuring a dictionary, entries, orthography concepts and rules. Afterwards, during two months, one team of six persons met several times to verify the dictionary, which contains a grammatical sketch.
In April of 2001, we also were aided by four advisors who were similarly involved and shared their knowledge: Moïse Yonta, Prosper Djiafeua, Patrice Yemmene and myself, coordinated by Stephen Anderson, SIL linguistic consultant, who himself had finalized the Ngiemboon alphabet in 1978. Then in July of 2003, Stephen, Moïse and I met in Yaoundé for a verfication session for the dictionary. We examined all the work from beginning to end, making corrections and proposing the format.
In March, 2010, Roger Blench, Marieke Martin, Stephen Anderson and me spent an intense week of work in Mbouda in order to identify the plant and animal to see how they corresponded to the lexical entries in Ngiemboon. We sought to include both the scientific names and their current names in the dictionary. Marieke and I spent an extra week in Yaoundé to work on the ideophones (expressions) and the relationship between the verbal suffixes and the ancient Bantoidal extensions.
After the suggestion of Roger Blench, Stephen Anderson spent a year to input English definitions into the entries, since it was heretofore only a Ngiemboon-French dictionary. In all these years, Stephen Anderson continued adding new entries as long as I created them and sent them to him. This is how the dictionary grew. Finally, Stephen Anderson and Prosper Djiafeua added two sections: one for verbal nouns, and the other for complementizers.
We hope that the speakers of Ngiemboon and others who speak this language will see this first online version of the dictionary as a wonderful demonstration of the cultural treasure represented by this language; and that all who endeavor to write in this language will consult this dictionary in order to preserve consistency, especially now that phonetic tone markings have been replaced by lexical tones in Ngiemboon literature; and that the dictionary will enrich the vocabulary of all to gain a better understanding of the language and culture.
We cannot fail to mention the great task that our collaborators have undergone, from those outside or within the Ngiemboon region, notably David Thormoset, Rhonda Thwing and Rober Hedinger, all members of SIL Cameroon, for their remarkable contributions and Moïse YONTA, Coordonnator of the Ngiemboon Project, member of the Cameroon Bible Translation and Literacy Association (l’Association Camerounaise pour la Traduction de la Bible et l’Alphabétisation - CABTAL). The data entry and editing process, year after year, would not have been possible except for the equipment given by CABTAL at Batcham-Ville, and for use by the Coordinator.
We would like to also mention Rober Tatant, Georgette Tenang, and especially David Tiozang for their encouragement, as well as the personnel of the sub-prefecture of Batcham, of Penka Michel and of Mbouda for the facility's permission to obtain the list of neighborhoods of Ngiemboon groupments, as well as the help from others who gave advice and suggestions.
No human work is perfect; we ask that users of this dictionary take advantage of the content available. We are working on a newer edition, and request that you bring us your comments and suggestions to the email below:
Etienne LONFO E-mail : [email protected]
Mbouda, western region, Cameroon