In Gbaya, the notion of the color of the woman’s skin is described as a bronze and beautiful complexion by emphasizing it Song of Songs 1:5 with ɓɔ́í̧ɔ̧m. Ɓɔ́í̧ɔ̧m is an ideophone that refers to refers to the bronze, beautiful complexion of a personʼs skin.

The color of “the tents of Kedar” is emphasized with ɓɔ́íɔ̧m, another ideophone that is used to describe a beautiful bronze or glowing brown (like the outer leather covering the tents of the Kedar people).

Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation that are used as literary devices in many African languages. Since the subject matter of Songs of Songs is particularly conducive to the use of ideophones, there are a total of 30 ideophones in the Gbaya Bible in that short biblical book alone. (Source: Philip Noss)