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Mandinka language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Mandinka | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: |  Mali Senegal The Gambia Guinea Côte d'Ivoire Burkina Faso Sierra Leone Liberia Guinea-Bissau |
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| Total speakers: | 5.3 million | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Mande West Mande Manding Mandinka |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | — | |
| ISO 639-3: | mnk | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Mandinka language, sometimes referred to as Mandingo, is a Mandé language spoken by millions of Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly similar to Bambara and Maninka or Malinké. It is a tonal language with two tones: low and high.
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Latin alphabet and Arabic alphabet-based orthographies are widely used for Mandinka; the former is official, but the latter is more widely used and older. In addition, the pan-Mandé writing system, the N'Ko alphabet, invented in 1949, is often used.
In the Latin script, c represents /ʧ/, ŋ /ŋ/, and ñ /ɲ/; the letters v, x, z, and q are not used. Vowels are as in Spanish, and are doubled to indicate length or distinguish words that are otherwise homophones.
The Arabic script uses no extra letters (apart from, rarely, an extra vowel mark for e), but some of the letters are pronounced differently from in Arabic.
The Latin and Arabic consonants correspond as follows:
| Arabic | ا | ع | ب | ت | ط | ض | ج | ه | ح | خ | د | ر | س | ش | ص | ث | ظ | ڢ | ل | م | ن | و | ي | ك | لا |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin | ('), aa, ee | (', with madda ŋ) | b, p | t | t | t | c, j | h | h | d | r | s | s (sh) | s | s | s | f | l | m | n, ñ, ŋ | w | y | k, g | la |
Letters in italics are not normally used in native Mandinka words. ه (h) may also be used to indicate a final glottal stop, which is not noted in the Latin script. The letter ŋ of the Latin script is often indicated with vowel signs in the Arabic script; see below.
The vowels correspond as follows (diacritics are placed over or under the consonant in Arabic):
| Arabic | ـَ | ـِ | ـُ | ـْ | ـִ | ـً | ـٍ | ـٌ | ـَا | ـِي | ـُو |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin | a, e | i, e, ee | o, u | (no following vowel) | e | aŋ, eŋ | iŋ, eeŋ, eŋ | oŋ, uŋ | aa | ii | oo, uu |
| Mandinka names of Arabic marks: | sira tilidiŋo; | sira tilidiŋo duuma; | ŋoo biriŋo; | sira murumuruliŋo; | tambi baa duuma; | sira tilindiŋo fula; | sira tilindiŋo duuma fula; | ŋoo biriŋo fula. |
In addition, a small Arabic 2 (۲) may be used to indicate reduplication, and the hamza may be used as in Arabic to indicate glottal stops more precisely.
- R. T. Addis, A Study on the Writing of Mandinka in Arabic script, 1963.
- Wolof and Mandinka resources, including a grammar and dictionary
- Electronic books in Mandinka, freely downloadable in the PDF format
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