Maninka (also known as Malinke), or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern
Manding Manding may refer to:
* Manding languages, a language-dialect continuum in West Africa
* Mandinka (disambiguation)
** Mandinka language, one of the Manding languages
** Mandinka people, a West African ethnic group
* The Mandé peoples who speak Man ...
subgroup of the
Mande language family. It is the mother tongue of the
Malinké people in
Guinea
Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...
, where it is spoken by 3,300,000 people and is the main language in the
Upper Guinea region, and in
Mali, where the closely related
Bambara is a
national language, as well as in
Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...
,
Senegal,
Sierra Leone and
Ivory Coast
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...
, where it has no official status. It was the language of court and government during the
Mali Empire
The Mali Empire ( Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or Manden; ar, مالي, Māl ...
.
Phonology
The Wudala dialect of Eastern Maninka, spoken in the central highlands of Guinea and comprehensible to speakers of all dialects in that country, has the following phonemic inventory.
[Mamadou Camara (1999) ''Parlons Malinké''] (Apart from tone, which is not written, sounds are given in orthography, as IPA values are not certain.)
Tones
There are two moraic tones, high and low, which in combination form rising and falling tones.
The marker for definiteness is a falling
floating tone
A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains neither consonants nor vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes.
An example occurs in Bambara, a Mande language o ...
: 'a bird' (LL), 'the bird' (LLHL, perhaps ); 'a belly' (HL), 'the belly' (HLHL, perhaps ).
Vowels
Vowel qualities are . All may be long or short, oral or nasal: and . (It may be that all nasal vowels are long.) Nasal vowels nasalize some following consonants.
Consonants
/d/ typically becomes a flap
between vowels. /c/ (also written ) often becomes /k/ before the vowels /i/ or /ɛ/. There is regional variation between /g/ and the
labial–velar /g͡b/. /h/ occurs mostly in Arabic loans, and is established. /p/ occurs in French and English loans, and is in the process of stabilizing.
Several voiced consonants become nasals after a nasal vowel. /b/ becomes /m/, /j/ becomes /ɲ/, and /l/ becomes /n/. For example, nouns ending in oral vowels take the plural in ''-lu''; nouns ending in nasal vowels take ''-nu''. However, /d/ remains oral, as in /nde/ "I, me".
Writing
Maninka in Guinea is written in an official Latin-based script, an
older official orthography (also Latin-based), and the
N'Ko alphabet.
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. .
External links
Report on Malinke in Mali en SenegalMalidaba
an online French-English-Russian-Maninka dictionary
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{{Mande languages
Manding languages
Languages of Guinea
Languages of Mali
Languages of Liberia
Languages of Senegal
Languages of Sierra Leone