ISO 639-3 bju | Native speakers (8 cited 1986) Glottolog busu1244 | |
Region Language family Niger–CongoAtlantic–CongoBenue–CongoSouthern BantoidBeboid?FuruBusuu | ||
Busuu is an unclassified Southern Bantoid language of Cameroon. R Breton noted in 1986 that there were just 8 speakers left, while as of 2005 there were 3 speakers of the language.
Questionable classification into Beboid
In the Furu-Awa Subdivision (Northern Cameroon bordering to Nigeria), three missions of ALCAM (Atlas Linguistique du Cameroun) between 1984 and 1986 investigated three Non-Jukunoid languages, among which Bikya and Bishuo are probably Beboid, but Busuu has been unable to be classified. All of these languages were spoken only by a few older inhabitants of the five villages Furu-Awa, (Furu-)Nangwa (Busuu-speaking), (Furu-)Turuwa, (Furu-)Sambari (Bishuo-speaking) and Furubana (Bikya-speaking). Lexical analysis has shown that while Bishuo has 24% lexical similarity with neighboring Beboid languages Nsaa and Nooni and Bikya has 16% resp. 17% similarity with them, Busuu has just 8% resp. 7%.