The goal of this long-term, multi-disciplinary research project is to document and describe the languages and cultures traditionally practiced in a region of Southern Chad comprised between the Chari and Salamat rivers to the West and South-East, and the Guéra mountains to the North. This region corresponds to the area of extension of the Bua language family (Adamawa, Niger-Congo), and includes a few other genetically unrelated languages, such as Laal (isolate) and Boor (Chadic). Most of these languages are endangered, and undocumented.

This project started out in 2010 with the description and documentation of Laal (still underway), and has recently started to expand, encompassing neighboring Boor (Chadic) and Ba (Bua, Adamawa), as well as two other Bua languages: Korom (as spoken by the Kawãwãy community in Tili Nugar) and Kulaale (Fania).

Language Family Location # Speakers Data collected
Laal Isolate Gori, Damtar ≃ 800 100 hours
(see below)
Kulaale (aka Fania) Adamawa (Bua) Tilé Nougar
and around
1100
(1997, SIL)
39 hours
(elicitation, texts)
Ba (aka Bua) Adamawa (Bua) Korbol
and around
7710
(1993 census)
13 hours
(elicitation, texts)
Korom Adamawa (Bua) Tilé Nougar ≃ 300? 8 hours
(elicitation)
Boor Chadic (East, Chari-Logone) Doumrao ≃ 100 7 hours
(elicitation, 1 text)

Documentation of Laal (isolate)

This project aims at providing the first extensive linguistic and anthropological documentation of Laal, an endangered language isolate spoken by ca. 800 people in two villages along the Chari river in Southern Chad: Gori and Damtar.

For more information, see the Laal project page on the DOBES program website.

Grant: Volkswagen Foundation DOBES grant Principal investigators: Research team:
  • Florian Lionnet: linguistics, head of research team
  • Remadji Hoinathy: anthropology, history
  • Sandrine Loncke: ethnomusicology
  • Ngomdé Djasnabaye: ethnobotany
Collected data (see online archive):
  • Elicited data: 30 hours (audio)
  • Text corpus:
    • 44 hours (audio and video; various genres)
    • Including 6 hours of searchable, time-aligned, transcribed, parsed, and translated texts
  • Music: 20 hours (audio and video; various genres)
  • Cultural documentation: 10 hours (video)
Publications and conference presentations: In preparation:
  • Lionnet, Florian. In prep. A Grammar of Laal.

  • Lionnet, Florian. In prep. Dictionnaire laal-français. (2500 entries)

  • Hoinathy, Remadji, Florian Lionnet, Sandrine Loncke, and Ngomde Djasnabaye. In prep. Les Gens de la maison: Monographie ethno-historique des Laal de Gori, Damtar et d'ailleurs (preliminary version: 67p.)


Kulaale (Bua, Adamawa)


Kulaale is a Bua language spoken by a group called "Fania" in Southeastern Chad, in the southernmost third of the Gu´era prefecture. Fania is an exonnym whose origin is as of now unclear. The Kulaale speakers call themselves Kulaaway (sg. Kulaanu). With about 1100 speakers (1997 estimate, SIL), many of whom live in town where they do not speak their language daily, Kulaale can be considered an endangered language (it is considered to be "severely endangered" by the UNESCO). I collected preliminary linguistic data in April 2014 and June 2017 in Tili Nugar, where one of the three dialects (identified by the speakers themselves) is spoken.

Korom (Bua, Adamawa)


Korom is a heretofore unknown endangered language spoken in three or four villages straddling the Moyen-Chari and Gu´era prefectures in Southern Chad. It is in particular spoken by the 60 or so people belonging to the Kawãwãy, a blacksmith community in the small Fania village of Tili Nugar. R. Hoinathy and I conducted preliminary fieldwork on the language and history of Tili Nugar in April 2014 and June 2017. The information collected shows that Korom is genetically very close to Ba (Bua, Adamawa), but different enough to constitute at the very least a very divergent dialect.

Ba (Bua, Adamawa)


Ba (also known as Bua, Boua) is spoken by ca. 7000 people in Chad, mainly in the canton de Korbol (but also around Gabil in the Guéra region of south-central Chad, and in towns like Sarh and N'Djaména). It belongs to the Bua subgroup of the Adamawa language family (Niger-Congo). There are several dialects, all mutually intelligible, whose number is not very well known yet. Due to the power of the Korbol Califate in the late 18th and 19th century, Ba has become a lingua franca of the canton de Korbol.

No in-depth linguistic work has ever been undertaken on Ba, let alone on its dialectal diversity. Sandrine Loncke, Remadji Hoinathy and I made several short trips to Korbol and other Ba villages in 2011 and 2012, to start documenting the language, oral history and musical practices of the Ba. I have started working on the description of the phonology and morphology of the Magalya dialect (spoken in and around Korbol), based on about 10 hours of recordings.


Boor (East Chadic)


Boor is a highly endangered East Chadic language spoken by about 100 speakers in the small village of Doumrao, about 15 km north of Gori. It is thought to be closely related to other East Chadic languages of the Miltou-Sarwa-Gadang sub-group. It is still transmitted to children in Doumrao, but more and more villagers tend to move to town, where intergenerational transmission of the language is the exception rather than the norm.

Boor has never been the object of any linguistic work. Sandrine Loncke, Remadji Hoinathy and I made two preliminary short trips to Doumrao in 2012.