The Mankanya language ( pt, Mancanha; french: Mancagne) is spoken by approximately 70,000 people in
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau ( ; pt, Guiné-Bissau; ff, italic=no, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫 𞤄𞤭𞤧𞤢𞥄𞤱𞤮, Gine-Bisaawo, script=Adlm; Mandinka: ''Gine-Bisawo''), officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau ( pt, República da Guiné-Bissau, links=no ) ...
,
Senegal
Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣� ...
and
Gambia
The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...
primarily belonging to the
ethnic group
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
of the same name. It belongs to the
Bak branch of the
Niger–Congo language family.
Mancanha is spoken east of the
Manjak language area and to the north of
Bissau
Bissau () is the capital, and largest city of Guinea-Bissau. Bissau had a population of 492,004. Bissau is located on the Geba River estuary, off the Atlantic Ocean, and is Guinea-Bissau's largest city, major port, and its administrative and ...
Island. It is also called ''Brame''.
[Wilson, William André Auquier. 2007. ''Guinea Languages of the Atlantic group: description and internal classification''. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik, 12.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.]
Sociolinguistic situation
The language has status as a national language in Senegal, and an
orthography
An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word, word breaks, Emphasis (typography), emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the ...
has recently been developed for writing it. Mankanya is known as "Uhula" by the people themselves (the
Mankanya people, or "Bahula"). The name 'Mankanya' is thought to have been conferred upon the people and their language by
colonialists who mistook the name of their chief at the time of
colonisation
Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
for the name of the people-group itself.
The language contains many
loanwords
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
from
Kriol. There is also extensive
bilingualism
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all ...
in Mandjak, a closely related language which is largely
mutually comprehensible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as a ...
, as well as in other minority languages spoken in the area, such as
Mandinka and
Jola. Finally, Mankanya speakers in Senegal also know French, and those in Gambia know English.
Literature
There is a translation of the Christian
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...
in the Mankanya language, available via the Holy Bible
YouVersion app. It includes a spoken recording (audio-bible).
Writing system
Mankanya uses the Latin alphabet. In Senegal, a decree of 2005 provides for an orthography for Mankanya.
References
Further reading
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Papel languages
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