A visit to a diviner babanki_divination Multimedia Documentation of Babanki Ritual Speech
Domain:
natural language processingRecord type:
datasetmedia
Editor:
AbrBenCorLucy
Publisher:
Uni
UniHost:
A young man consults a diviner to find out what is responsible for the misfortunes and illnesses in his family. This project documents the language of Babanki traditional ritual performances. Babanki is an endangered Grassfields language spoken in Babanki Tungo and Big Babanki, northwest of Cameroon. The language of rituals contains poetic forms, lexical items and grammatical structures not found in everyday Babanki speech. Unfortunately, these special speech forms are threatened by the strong influence of modernism and especially Christianity which have caused the number of people who still engage in ritual performances to drop drastically. Consequently, the Babanki cultural values inherent in the ritual performances are no longer cherished and transmitted to younger generations. Using his special cowries the diviner is able to see beyond and to inform the ordinary man what is going on in his life and then to prescribe preventive or rescue measures for him to take.
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