Ethnobotany and Language Revitalisation: The Case of Plants in Isubu of Cameroon

Sirih-Nagang Nancy Nyindem

doi:10.7176/jlll/62-05

Abstract

This paper presents the outcome of ethnobotanical documentary research conducted among the Isubu community of the South West Region of Cameroon. Due to destruction of the ecosystem and biodiversity and the fact that the language has been identified as endangered (Atindogbé 2010, Akum 2013), there is a need to conserve indigenous knowledge on plants in this language. The study adopted an ethnographic interview survey. Fifteen language consultants were interviewed residing in from the speech community using Cameroon Pidgin English and the data were transcribed and annotated in ELAN. The article comprises four sections. In section one background information on the Bimbia people and language, the ecology of the region, and the research methodology employed in this research will be presented. Section two discusses the Isubu botanical folk taxonomy that is the way the people classify plants. In section three l will provide details of medicinal and other uses of a sample of 27 plants but the quantitative analysis will be drawn from a wider corpus of 92 plants. The focus in section four is on the role of such a study to the pressing need to safeguard, and maintain endangered languages and enhance the interrelatedness of language, culture, and biodiversity. We expect that the outcome of this research will benefit the local community and contribution to the preservation and possible revitalisation of the language. Keywords: Ethnobotany, Revitalisation, Endangered language, Preservation DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/62-05 Publication date: November 30 th 2019

Highlights

Isubu is one of the coastal tribes known as the Sawas and found in the coastal area at the foot of Mt
Alternate names for Isubu are Bimbia, Isubu, Isuwu, Su, Isu, and Subu. It has been identified as an endangered Bantu language of zone A (Atindogbé 2010)
The data exploited in this study were collected in the Bimbia village situated in the Bimbia estuary area east of Limbe

Summary

Introduction

Was a little disappointed with not able to find one, and was clearly informed the village no longer has a traditional healer/specialist This gap activates an open eye to the continuous transmission of folk knowledge of plants in this community, coupled with the fact that the lack of inter-generational transfer of the language was identified as one of the factors contributing to the endangered state of the language. Faced with this reality we wondered whether we would get data on the medicinal and other uses of plants in Isubu. They do not have a peculiar name and only refer to as leaves for a particular purpose as compared to others which have typical indigenous names

2.2: Plants identified as tree

2.3: Names of plants identified as grass

3: Plants and noun class classification

Conclusion