Myene language
language
Myene is a cluster of closely related Bantu varieties spoken in Gabon by about 46,000 people. It is perhaps the most divergent of the Narrow Bantu languages, though Nurse & Philippson (2003) place it in with the Tsogo languages (B.30). The more distinctive varieties are Mpongwe (Pongoué), Galwa (Galloa), and Nkomi.
Phonology
/ɡ/ is also heard as [ɣ] in free variation when preceding vowels or semivowels depending on articulation.
Voiced sounds /b, d, dʒ/ may also be heard as implosives [ɓ, ɗ, ɗ̠ʲ] in free variation across dialects.
In the Adyumba dialect /dʒ/ may also be heard as [dz] in free variation.
Sounds /ᶮtʃ, ᶮdʒ/ may also be heard as prenasal alveolar affricates [ⁿts, ⁿdz] across dialects.
/w/ may be heard as more palatal [ɥ] when before front vowel sounds.
A nasalized labio-velar sound /w̃/ may also be attested in the Mpongwe dialect.
Dictionary
Jean-Rémy Bessieux published a Pongwe dictionary in 1847.
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This entry incorporates text from “Myene language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.