Spoken L1 Language: Somyev
- AES status:
- nearly extinct
- Source:
-
Campbell, Lyle and Lee, Nala Huiying and Okura, Eve and Simpson, Sean and Ueki, Kaori 2022
- Comment:
- Somyev (536-kgt) = Critically Endangered (80 percent certain, based on the evidence available) (It is now spoken by fewer than five elderly people, though it was once the language spoken by the blacksmiths of the region... [Sombə] has given way not to a colonial language, nor have its speakers adopted a regional lingua franca as their primary language. Rather, the local variety of Mambila, known as Maberem, has taken on this role... The language is no longer used on a daily basis, in any domain. Younger people don’t know the language, though some middle-aged people have a passive knowledge... A language which was once the primary language of daily use for the Somyev is now reduced to its last handful of speakers, despite an apparent substantial increase in numbers of the Somyev, and is no longer a language of daily use... In 1996, I met with some 15-20 fluent speakers of the language, all of whom used it on a daily basis, and some of whom had not, or only partially, adopted Maberem. All were elderly blacksmiths, the youngest being about 60.1 was told at the time that they were the only remaining speakers. A few members of the next generation, i.e. some of the male children of this group, had acquired a passive knowledge of the language. A decade later, in 2006, only three speakers of Sombo were left in Kila Yang, one an elderly woman (said to be around 100), and with another in the neighbouring village of Kuma (both the woman and the Kuma resident have since died).)
(see Connell 2010)
Glottolog
[kgt] at ISO 639-3
[kgt] at OLAC
[kgt] at IMTVault
Somyev at Endangered Languages Project
Wikidata
Wikipedia