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study informing the internal classification of the Central Core languages remains to be
conducted.
It is also unclear whether the different subgroups within the Central Core consist
of speech varieties which are indeed mutually unintelligible. In other words, can each
node under Central Core be considered a separate language, or is it better to speak of the
Central Core as being a single language with six major dialectal variants? One possible
means of testing this is the Recorded Text Test (RTT, Casad 1974). In the RTT, texts are
recorded in several related speech varieties. These texts are then played for speakers of
the other speech varieties and the subjects are graded for their level of comprehension of
each text. Of course, care must be taken to insure that the test is in fact measuring
inherent intelligibility and not learned intelligibility.
In the mid 1990’s, researchers with SIL and the Association Centrafricaine pour
la Traduction de la Bible et l’Alphabetisation (ACATBA) in CAR conducted language
surveys in Linda (Blühberger 1996), Yakpa (Moehama 1994), Togbo (Buchanan 1996),
Yangere (Moehama 1995), and Ngbugu (Kieschke 1993). The first four of these surveys
conducted a “rapid appraisal” RTT, a simplified form of the test in which an evaluation
of intelligibility is made by playing a text from a related speech variety for a group of
people (rather than for individuals) who speak a language variety. The group is then
evaluated as having one of three levels: (1) good intelligibility, (2) some intelligibility, or
(3) no intelligibility. For the surveys conducted, the following scores were obtained:
Table 1.2: Levels of intelligibility between Banda speech varieties
Linda Mbre Ndele Mono Togbo Togbo Vara Ngbugu Mbanza Dakpa
(CAR) (DRC)
Linda 2(+/-) 3(+)
Yakpa 1- 1(-) 3
Togbo
(CAR)
1 2 1 1- 1 1 3 2
Yangere 1 1 1- 1 1- 3 3 3
10