Papel language

Papel, or Oium, is a Bak language of Guinea-Bissau.
Papel is the language spoken by the Papel people, who live in the central coastal regions of Guinea-Bissau, namely the Biombo Region where it is spoken by 136,000 Bissau-Guineans. Papel speakers are estimated to be around 140,000 in total globally.
Papel has 79,000 speakers living on Bissau Island uhlawʔ or . Dialects include Biombo in the southwest and Safim in the northeast.

Classification

Papel is part of the Bak language family based in the Senegal/Guinea-Bissau region, thus it is linguistically similar to the Mankanya and Mandjak languages, members of the 'Papel languages' a language sub-family. Today, Papel, along with its linguistic neighbours uses Latin-based script.