Bissa (language)
| Bissa Bisa, Bussancé | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Burkina Faso , Ghana , Togo | |
| speaker | 450,000 | |
| Linguistic classification |
|
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in | none | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
- |
|
| ISO 639 -2 |
nic |
|
| ISO 639-3 | ||
The Bissa , also known as Bisa or Boussancé , is an East Mande language spoken today by an estimated 450,000 people in the Bissa in the Boulgou Province in southeast Burkina Faso and in small enclaves in northern Ghana and Togo .
Comparable to the San , it is a Mande language island in the range of the Gur languages . The main distribution area is almost completely enclosed by the Mòoré . Only in the south does it come up against the Kasem , the Kusaal and the Moba .
Dialectal structure
The Bissa in today's Burkina Faso is divided into two main dialects: Lebri in the west and Barka in the east. Within the western dialect, two further sub-forms, the core Lebri and the Lere, can be distinguished. Differences between the varieties can be found in vocabulary as well as in phonology and morphology . The difference between the main dialects Barka and Lebri is very pronounced. It is difficult to communicate with speakers of the southern Lebri variant Lere and the Barka speakers.
Sociolinguistic situation
The sociolinguistic studies show different constellations of multilingualism in the various dialect areas. With Lebri speakers, the competence of Mòoré, the dominant language in this area, is much rarer and less than with Barka speakers. In the western Lebri dialect, competence in Mòoré is even completely denied by the majority of speakers and in surveys on multilingualism Bissa is stated as the only language.
See also
literature
- John Berthelette: Survey Report on the Bissa Language . SIL International , Dallas, Tx. 2001.
- André Prost: La langue bisa. Grammaire et dictionnaire (Études voltaïques; Vol. 1). IFAN, Dakar 1950.