| Bima | |
|---|---|
| Nggahi Mbojo | |
.svg){kind=small} Aksara Mbojo in Bima (Mbojo) script | |
| Native to | Indonesia |
| Region | Sumbawa |
| Ethnicity | Bimanese |
Native speakers | (500,000 cited 1989)[1] |
Austronesian
| |
| Dialects |
|
| Latin, Lontara script (Mbojo variant) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bhp |
| Glottolog | bima1247 |
| ELP | Bima |
The Bima language, or Bimanese (Bima: Nggahi Mbojo, Indonesian: Bahasa Bima), is an Austronesian language spoken on the eastern half of Sumbawa Island, Indonesia, which it shares with speakers of the Sumbawa language. Bima territory includes the Sanggar Peninsula, where the extinct Papuan language Tambora was once spoken. Bima is an exonym; the autochthonous name for the territory is Mbojo and the language is referred to as Nggahi Mbojo. There are over half a million Bima speakers. Neither the Bima nor the Sumbawa people have alphabets of their own for they use the alphabets of the Bugis and the Malay language indifferently.[2]
- ^ Bima at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ Prichard, J. C. (1874). Researches into the Physical History of Mankind. Vol. 5: Containing Researches Into the History of the Oceanic and of the American Nations. London: Sherwood, Gilbert, and Piper. ASIN B0041T3N9G.