Özet:

Abstract Using the word ‘Fali’ to identify a group of people and languages in northern Cameroon and Nigeria has caused significant challenges to the classification of the languages and the description of the link between those communities. This study aims at testing the intelligibility of Nigerian Fali to Cameroonian Fali (CamFali), Bana and Gude speakers in order to bring out the relationship between the languages. Participants to the study include 88 Cameroonian native and fluent speakers of the above listed languages, made up of 46 CamFali speakers from the Bossum, Kangu, Peske-Bori and Tinguelin communities, 35 Gude speakers from Gude dialect (Gude D), Djimi and Njanyi, and 7 Bana speakers. The informants were met either in-person or online (through WhatsApp), and they listened to 3 recordings from 3 dialects of Nigerian Fali, namely Vimtim, Bahuli and Muchalla which were obtained from Global Recordings Network to test the listeners’ recognition and comprehension of the languages. The findings indicated that the 3 languages are neither intelligible to CamFali nor to Bana listeners, but they are rather variants of Djimi which in turn is a dialect of Gude.  The study also revealed that from the 3 dialects of Gude, Djimi is more related to Gude D than Njanyi. It was therefore concluded that Nigerian Fali is not related to CamFali and Bana, but it is rather Gude, which confirms that the word ‘Fali’ does not refer to specific people with common ancestral or linguistic background.

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