Maninka language

Maninka
Malinke Maninkakan
Spoken in	Guinea, Mali, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire
Native speakers	2.8 million  (1986–1999)
Language family	Niger–Congo ? Mande Western Mande ... Manding East Manding Maninka
Writing system	N'Ko, Latin
Official status
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-3	variously: mku – Konyanka emk – Eastern Maninkaka msc – Sankaran Maninkaka mzj – Manya (Liberia) myq – Forest Maninka jod – Wojenaka jud – Worodougou kfo – Koro kga – Koyaga mxx – Mahou (Mawukakan)

Maninka, or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo languages. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people and is spoken by 3,300,000 speakers in Guinea and Mali, where the closely related Bambara is a national language, and also in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, where it has no official status. The Ethnologue lists the following varieties, but notes that the distinctions between them are largely uncertain:

• Eastern Maninkakan, also called Malinke or Maninka, spoken by 1,890,000 speakers in Guinea and c.200,000 in Liberia and Sierra Leone;
• Maninka, Konyanka, spoken by 128,000 speakers in Guinea;
• Maninka, Sankaran, also called Faranah, spoken in Guinea;
• Forest Maninka, a part of the Maninka-Mori group together with Wojenaka, Worodougou, Koro, Koyaga, and Mahou, spoken by 15,000 speakers in Côte d'Ivoire.

References

• Vydrine, Valentin. Manding–English Dictionary (Maninka, Bomana). Volume 1: A, B, D–DAD, Supplemented by Some Entries From Subsequent Volumes (1999). Dimitry Bulanin Publishing House, 315 pp. ISBN 5860071787.

External links

• Report on Malinke in Mali en Senegal
• Nko script and a literary Maninka language by Valentin Vydrine
• Some text from the language Museum
• Language museum in kankan
• Ethnologue report