Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 68
eastern plain. The village name Korana Basa is a bit confusing since it is taken from the ward
Korana Basa. As already stated in our general introduction, Korana Basa, Korana Kwandama
and Hudimche were formerly known as 'Gharguze', and in 1913 Moisel mentioned 'Hirguse'
(Gharguze) on his first map of the region. Moisel also mentioned 'Goso', which would later
become Gwoza, and the second part of Moisel's 'Hirguse', that is guse, must be seen as being
at the root of the etymology of Gwoza. We will explain the historical connection between
'Gharguze' and Gwoza in our chapter ‘Names and places’ in Part Three, and also in Part Two
when we describe the unsettling colonial years. What we want to note at this point, is that in
1994 both the administrative villages of Dghweɗe were under the district head of Gwoza,
even though Ghwa'a was not only geographically but oral-historically orientated more
towards the eastern rather than the western plain.
The other aspect we need to mention here is the two resettlement areas of Dghweɗe. Figure 3
shows Kwatama to the west of Korana Basa and Barawa to the east of Ghwa'a. The western
resettlement area cuts historically into the Lamang village of Hambagda, which expands
naturally much further into the western plain than Barawa, because the latter is limited by the
river Kirawa, which marks the international boundary with the far north of Cameroon. The
fact that Kwatama, as Korana Basa resettlement area, has much better access to arable land,
has been a cause for conflict since its creation during late colonial times. Alternatively, from a
topographical perspective, Ghwa'a is more easily accessible than Korana Basa because the
Gwoza hills are generally much steeper on the western side. From a historical perspective,
Gwoza developed as the main central place during German colonial times, which was further
promoted by the shift of the administrative power structure from Ashigashiya to Gwoza under
British rule in the 1920s. We learn more about how the British indirect rule further
accelerated this process in our colonial history chapter of Part Two.
Language distribution based on village and ward boundaries
Figure 3a below shows the linguistic divisions of the Gwoza LGA. While Dghweɗe is a
linguistic unity in this respect, many other administrative villages have language diversity.
Altogether there are eight languages spoken, which all belong to Central Chadic or BiuMandara, a term introduced by Paul Newman (1977). Central Chadic is subdivided into BiuMandara A and B, consisting of altogether sixty languages. Dghweɗe is a language of BiuMandara A, but its linguistic sub-classification remains controversial. This is especially the
case with Newman's Biu-Mandara A4, which is the Mandara group. Paul Newman (1990:1-5)
classifies A4 into (a) Mandara, Dghweɗe, Glavda, Guduf, Gvoko, Podoko, and (b) Lamang
and Mabas. Ekkehard Wolff (2007) accepts this classification but adds Hde to Newman's
Mandara group (b) and refers to it as 'Wandala-Lamang Group' (ibid 133).
According to Wolff (ibid), Richard Gravina (2007) made the latest attempt to reconstruct the
classification of Chadic Biu-Mandara A, by pointing to a geographical dichotomy, which
leads him to distinguish between a north and south major group. Gravina further sub-divides
the north group into three major sub-groups, which puts Lamang and Mandara in the same
group. Wolff (email communication 2012) is unhappy with Gravina's result and wants to
maintain a separate 'Lamang group', which he refers to as the 'Lamang-Mandara convenience
group' to accommodate their similarity from a perspective of geographical vicinity.
I am in no position to argue over the linguistic controversy between Wolff's desire to keep
Wandala-Lamang as a 'convenience group' due to their geographical vicinity, against
Gravina's view that is purely based on phonological, morphological, and syntactical
similarities, which led to a split of Mandara into a south and north major group. However,
Wolff and Gravina seem to agree that Dghweɗe, Glavda, Guduf, and Gvoko are grouped,
while Lamang appears more related to Hde (Tur), with which we tend to agree. Wolff's more
historical view, based on geographical vicinity, supports my idea that Lamang was possibly
spoken in the Gwoza hills before the establishment of the Gvoko, Dghweɗe, Guduf, and
Glavda speakers.
66
