Beosi

The Beosi are short-statured hunter-gatherers of the central highlands of Madagascar. They are distinct from the Mikea hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists of the lowlands.

Beosi

Regions with significant populations
Madagascar
Languages
Malagasy
Related ethnic groups
other Malagasy peoples, not necessarily close to the Mikea

Language

Beosi
Ethnicity	Beosi
Language family	Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian Western Indonesian Barito East Barito Malagasy Beosi
Language codes
ISO 639-3	None (mis)
Glottolog	vezo1235

The Beosi speak a dialect of the Malagasy language, which originated in southern Borneo. Speculation that there may be remnants of a Vazimba language in Beosi speech was investigated by Blench & Walsh (2009). Beosi speech was found to have a relatively high proportion of vocabulary that cannot be identified with words in other varieties of Malagasy, substantially more than the Mikea dialect, and is more likely than Mikea to retain a Vazimba substrate, if such a thing even exists. The possibility is complicated by the extensive use of evasive language and cant by the Beosi, which is designed to hinder understanding by outsiders.^[1]