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License:
NOODL-1.0
Steward:
Institute of African Digital HumanitiesDataset ID:
cmu2n7xzj00uwnv07q9713hbz
Release Date: 9/15/2026
Format: TSV, PDF
Size: 362.82 KB
A Bodiman Sociocultural Dataset is a sociocultural and onomastic dataset documenting the Bodiman of Cameroon, collected under the project "Projet de confection d'un didacticiel sur la composition des peuplements au Cameroun" (a didactic-software project on the composition of Cameroon's settled peoples), coordinated by Prof. Emmanuel Ngue Um for CERDOTOLA (the Inter-State Institution of scientific co-operation for the preservation, diffusion and valorization of the African cultural heritage) during the project's pilot data-collection phase in March-April 2020. Unlike a purely linguistic corpus, the dataset foregrounds the community itself as the unit of documentation: its history, social organisation, religious life and material culture, with onomastics, common expressions and a numeral system providing a linguistic component elicited in the community's own speech (recorded in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or in a Latin-based approximation where IPA was not available to the fieldworker). The Bodiman are a nomadic minority community with origins traced to Congo, governed by royalty. Circumcision marks male adulthood. An ancestor cult (*ŋgambi*) is maintained. The annual *Suunɛm Ebanabambo* festival is held in December. The community's language and cultural practices share strong affinities with those of the Douala. The dataset's primary added value lies in documenting the Bodiman community's own self-description — its social organisation, kinship and marriage practices, religious and symbolic life, economy and material culture, and internal system of personal, ethnic and place names — rather than only its named language or dialect. This community-centred, ethnographic design distinguishes it from language-only documentation, while the accompanying onomastic, common-expression and numeral-system data still make the dataset usable for lexicographic and comparative linguistic work on the Bodiman variety.
Licensing
Nwulite Obodo Open Data Licence 1.0 (NOODL-1.0)
https://licensingafricandatasets.com/nwulite-obodo-licenseRestrictions/Special Constraints
By downloading this dataset, you agree: - To use it for research and scientific use only - that you will not re-host or re-share this dataset
Forbidden Usage
You agree not to use the data for: profiling, surveillance or any purpose prejudicial to the interests of the individuals or community described; caricaturing, stereotyping, or otherwise misrepresenting the community documented; Generative AI; reproduction; duplication; modification; augmentation; copying; distribution; transmission; display; sale; transfer; publication or creation of derivative works without the explicit permission of the legal owner of the dataset.
Intended Use
(a) Ethnographic and cultural documentation: - Sociocultural and anthropological research: The narrative responses (identity, residence and mobility, social and political organisation, kinship and marriage, religious and symbolic life, economy and material culture) support ethnographic, anthropological and sociolinguistic research on the Bodiman community, and complement rather than replace existing ethnographic and anthropological scholarship. (b) Onomastic and toponymic research: - Personal-name, ethnonym and toponym documentation: The structured onomastic entries, each tagged with a semantic primitive and grammatical category, support onomastic and lexicographic research and comparative naming-practice studies across Cameroonian communities. (c) Linguistic and lexicographic tasks: - Lexicon documentation and comparative numeral typology: The common-expression and numeral-system tables, transcribed where possible in IPA, are useful for building basic lexical resources for the Bodiman variety and for comparative numeral-system typology across Cameroonian languages. (d) Pedagogical and educational-software use: - Didactic-software content: As part of the pilot phase of a project building educational ("didacticiel") material on the composition of Cameroon's settled peoples, the dataset supports the development of teaching content on the Bodiman community's history, culture and onomastics. (e) Cultural modeling and intercultural dialogue: - Cultural modeling: The sociocultural, onomastic and linguistic data in this dataset can be used to build and enrich interactive network-based representations of cultural communities, modeling the relationships and affinities between Cameroonian communities across historical, linguistic, geographic, social and cognitive dimensions. An example of such cultural modeling in the African multicultural and multilingual context is the CamRhizome interactive visualization, accessible at https://ngue-um.github.io/Enseignement-Apprentissage-LN/#/reseau, which maps intercommunal connections among 20 Cameroonian language communities and can serve as a tool for enhancing intercultural dialogue in African multicultural and multilingual spaces.
This dataset is distributed as a .tar.gz archive (A_Bodiman_Sociocultural_Dataset.tar.gz) with the following contents:
A_Bodiman_Sociocultural_Dataset/
├── 1_Metadonnees_Enquete.tsv — administrative metadata (1 row)
├── 2_Reponses_Ouvertes.tsv — open-ended narrative Q&A responses
├── 3_Onomastique.tsv — onomastic entries (anthroponyms, ethnonyms, toponyms)
├── 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv — common bilingual expressions
├── 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv — numeral system entries
├── 6_Annexe_Primitifs.tsv — NSM semantic primitives reference table (16 groups)
└── A_Bodiman_Sociocultural_Dataset.pdf — PDF version of the questionnaire
Note: The fieldwork interview audio recording is not yet included in this release. It will be added in a subsequent update. Recordings were collected on the fieldwork sites and document the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee.
The Bodiman are a nomadic minority community of Congolese origin, governed by royalty. Their cultural and linguistic practices show strong affinities with the Douala.
The community is governed by royalty. Circumcision marks male adulthood. Their nomadic heritage distinguishes them from surrounding settled communities.
An ancestor cult (ŋgambi) is actively maintained. The annual Suunɛm Ebanabambo festival, held in December, is the principal communal celebration.
Staple foods include sweet potato, yam and fish. Traditional drinks include arki and palm wine. Musical traditions include Ɛsɛwɛ and Makossa.
The interview was conducted with the local expert speaking Bodiman. The questionnaire elicited common bilingual expressions (rubrique 4, approximately 311 rows) and a numeral system (rubrique 5, approximately 19 entries). Together with the onomastic entries in rubrique 3 (approximately 115 rows), these fields constitute the dataset's linguistic component. No tabular data files (TSV) are included in this release; they will be added when the dataset transcription is complete. No audio recording is included in this release; it will be added in a subsequent update.
The dataset was collected through a questionnaire designed to gather sociocultural and onomastic information about the Bodiman community. This was done during the pilot data-collection phase (March-April 2020) of the "Projet de confection d'un didacticiel sur la composition des peuplements au Cameroun," coordinated by Prof. Emmanuel Ngue Um for CERDOTOLA (Centre International des Civilisations Bantu / Institution Inter-Etats de cooperation scientifique pour la preservation, la diffusion et la mise en valeur du patrimoine africain), in partnership with the Ecole normale superieure de Bertoua. Record identifier: MBOD_2020_001.
The dataset represents a sociocultural and onomastic questionnaire designed to elicit the identity, history, social organisation, religious life, economy and material culture of a named community in Cameroon, together with a structured record of its personal names, ethnic names and place names, common bilingual expressions, and numeral system. The questionnaire was developed for the pilot phase of a project building educational ("didacticiel") material on the composition of Cameroon's settled peoples; unlike a purely linguistic questionnaire, its entry point and primary unit of documentation is the community, not its language or dialect, although a linguistic component (onomastics, common expressions, numeral system) is elicited throughout in the community's own speech.
The dataset comprises narrative question/answer entries (rubriques 2 and 3.1-3.6); onomastic entries (rubrique 3, approximately 115 rows); common expressions (rubrique 4, approximately 311 rows); and numeral-system entries (rubrique 5, approximately 19 rows). Tabular data files will be added when transcription is complete.
This release comprises the PDF version of the filled questionnaire (A_Bodiman_Sociocultural_Dataset.pdf). When the dataset transcription is complete, the release will be updated to include six related tables as separate tab-separated-value (TSV) files:
1_Metadonnees_Enquete.tsv: Administrative metadata (one row).
2_Reponses_Ouvertes.tsv: Question/answer pairs for the open-ended narrative sub-sections.
3_Onomastique.tsv: Onomastic entries (anthroponyms, ethnonyms, toponyms).
4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv: Common bilingual expressions.
5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv: Numeral system entries.
6_Annexe_Primitifs.tsv: NSM semantic primitives reference table (65 items).
Anthroponyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):
| Anthroponym | Meaning / notes |
|---|---|
| Ngalle | “fusil” |
| Mfomou | “voice un” |
| Mpondo | “chef” |
| Lembe | “voyant” |
| Bille | “la guerre” |
| Moukoko | “tronc d’arbre” |
| Penda | “pari” |
| Moussinga | “la corde ,le fils” |
Toponyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):
| Toponym | Meaning / notes |
|---|---|
| PEN | “Foret” |
| TONGO | “cours d’eau” |
| NSAKE | “le versant” |
| DIKOMBE | |
| NKAM | “le fleuve NKAM” |
| MOUANJA | “le fleuve” |
Ethnonyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):
| Ethnonym | Meaning / notes |
|---|---|
| Bona Nyamsi | “les descendants de Nyamsi” |
| Bona Lembe | “Descendants de Lembe” |
| Bonakata | “descendants de Kata” |
| BonaNdjeng | “descendants de Ndjeng |
| BonaPende | “descendants de Pende” |
Common expressions (from 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv):
| French | Bodiman | Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Salut (formule neutre, à toute heure) | « Ma᷅so᷇ma᷅ » | |
| salutations du matin (en signe de déférence/respect) | « sompaaganya » | |
| salutations de la mi-journée (plusieurs personnes) | « mə somubwam » | |
| salutations de la mi-journée (en signe de déférence/respect) | « mə somubwam paaganya » | |
| salutation de la soirée (une personne) | « ɳgogi libam » | |
| salutation de la soirée (plusieurs personnes) | « somwa ɳgogi libam » | |
| salutation de la soirée (en signe de déférence/respect) | « ɳgogi libam paaganya » | |
| salutation de la nuit (une personne) | « unaɳga bwam » | |
| salutation de la nuit (plusieurs personnes) | « unaɳgabwam somwa » | |
| salutation de la nuit (en signe de déférence/respect) | « unaɳgabwam paaganya » |
Numeral system (from 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv):
| French | Bodiman | Compositional gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Un | Fɔ᷇ | |
| Deux | Beɓa᷅a᷇ | |
| Trois | belaalo | |
| Quatre | Binyi᷅i᷇ | |
| Cinq | Bitan᷅ | |
| Six | Tooɓa | |
| Sept | saamba | |
| Huit | wambe | |
| Neuf | bowa | |
| Dix | Jo᷇m | |
| Onze | Jo᷇m ni᷅ fɔ᷇ | 11=10+1 |
| Douze | Jo᷇m ni᷅ beɓaa |