Issue 95 of Afrika und Übersee combines five articles and two reviews: Shamsuddeen Bello delves into the analysis of Hausa praise epithets of the kirari genre, providing an in-depth descriptive study of setting, props and poetic elements of Saka Cira, a piece performed by the hunter-performer Ummaru Usman Malalo. A series of photographs by Sani Maikatanga supplements the article.

All other articles focus on phonology: Klaus Beyer and Janika Kunzmann trace labial-velar consonants in Mbum, Adamawa, in support of their reconstruction on Proto-Kebi-Benue level. Ekkehard Wolff traces the internal development of velar nasals and prenasalised obstruents in Chadic and demonstrates that there is no need for their reconstruction at Proto-Chadic level. Christopher Green discusses moraic mismatches in Somali phonology, and Elaine Scherrer provides a first descriptive outline of the phonology of Naba (Central Sudanic).

The volume closes with two reviews: Ludwig Gerhardt on an anthology on minority language research in Nigeria, edited by Roger Blench and Stuart McGill, and Gardy Stein on Ellen Hurst-Harosh’s sociolinguistic study of the South African “stylect” Tsotsitaal.

The articles assembled in volume 94 of Afrika und Übersee, its second online issue, cover topics ranging from semantics and morphosyntax to quoting standards. Akumbu and Kießling explore the “Literal and metaphorical usages of eat and drink verbs in Babanki”, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. Ibirahim gives a comprehensive overview of “Aspects of Negation in Makaa (A83)”, a Bantu language spoken in the East Region in Cameroon. Meyer and Treis provide a practical guideline for authors and editors on “How to quote Ethiopian authors in linguistic publications”. Two further articles are based on contributions to the “10th Biennal International Colloquium on the Chadic languages (BICCL)” that took place in Hamburg in 2019: Harley discusses “Nominal and verbal plurality in the Mandara and Ɓata subgroups of Central Chadic” and Roberts presents “Initial findings on the Boor language”, spoken in south-eastern Chad.

The first online volume of Afrika und Übersee covers a wide range of topics in African linguistics. It contains three sections: the first one is dedicated to articles from the symposium “Endangered languages in contact: Nigeria’s Plateau languages” which took place on the 25th and 26th of March 2004 in honor of Prof. Ludwig Gerhardt on the occasion of his retirement. The authors explore various phenomena of contact shared by Niger Congo languages of the Plateau branch and Afroasiatic languages of the Chadic branch.

The second section contains selected papers from the 23rd Afrikanistentag which took place on the 25th and 26th of May 2018 in Hamburg. The conference spawned a set of thematically diverse contributions including a semantic analysis of the lexeme juju in Cameroonian English and a group of papers on different aspects of the Amharic language.

The third section presents papers recently submitted to Afrika und Übersee. Two papers provide primary data on little researched languages of Western and Central Africa, i.e. Saba (East Chadic) and Akum (Southern Jukunoid). One paper is dedicated to the expression of diminutivity in Central Ring Grassfields Bantu languages with a focus on Babanki.