Bayot language

Bayot
Native to	Senegal, Guinea-Bissau
Native speakers	19,000 (2006)[1]
Language family	unclassified
Dialects	Essin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bda
Glottolog	bayo1255[2]

Bayot (Baiot, Baiote, Bayotte) is a language of southern Senegal, southwest of Ziguinchor in a group of villages near Nyassia, in northwestern Guinea-Bissau, along the Senegalese border, and in the Gambia.

Bayot has traditionally been considered the most divergent Jola language, in the (geographic) Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family. However, half of its vocabulary, including basic terms such as pronouns, are not Jola or even Atlantic, and may not be Niger–Congo, though grammatically it behaves as a typical Jola language. It is therefore often left unclassified pending further research.

References

1. Bayot at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Bayot". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.