Mimi of Decorse

Mimi of Decorse is a language of Chad attested only in a word list labelled Mimi that G. J. Decorse collected around 1900 and Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes later published. Joseph Greenberg placed it in 1960 within the Maban family alongside the separately attested Mimi of Nachtigal, but George Starostin reassessed the evidence in 2011 and argued the apparent Maban similarities more likely came from contact with the locally dominant Maba language; he provisionally treated Mimi of Decorse as an isolate, while noting features suggestive of the Central Sudanic languages. It remains formally unclassified, with the two Mimi word lists the only surviving record of either variety.