Bamum People - Writing System

Writing System

Bamum language (Shüpamom, pronounced, "language Bamum"; in the French tradition spelled Bamoun) is one of the Benue–Congo languages of Cameroon, with approximately 215,000 speakers. The language is particularly well known for its original phonetic script, developed by Sultan Njoya and his palace circle around 1895. The development of the script spanned ideographic to syllabic systems, with the script's final and most prominent form known as "A-ka-u-ku." This is not to be confused with another of Njoya's inventions, an artificial spoken language known as Shümom, which was devised after the script. Outsider observers in recent years have tended to confuse the script with the invented language. The French colonials destroyed Njoya's schools and forbade the teaching of the script, which fell into rapid decline and today hovers on the brink of extinction (the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project, in Foumban, is teaching the script to young people to spread literacy), but the Shümom language is spoken as a second language by many people and is taught on the radio throughout the Bamum kingdom. Cameroonian musicians Claude Ndam and Gerryland are native speakers of Bamum and use it in their music.