The Toro language, ''Tɔrɔ tegu'' 'Mountain speech', is a
Dogon language
The Dogon languages are a small closely-related language family that is spoken by the Dogon people of Mali and may belong to the proposed Niger–Congo family. There are about 600,000 speakers of its dozen languages. They are tonal languages, a ...
spoken in
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...
. It is closest to the prestige variety of Dogon, ''
Jamsay tegu'', though speakers deny they are related and understand little of it. (They understand nothing of the Dogon languages on the escarpment or plateau.) Hochstetler report difficulties in comprehension between Tɔrɔ tegu and one of the western Plains Dogon languages,
Tomo kan.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Tone
There are two tones, high and low. Each stem contains a tone melody, and each tone melody must contain at least one high tone- that is, a word cannot be exclusively low tone. The tone melody of a word may be overridden by inflectional morphology or syntax. In some cases a word may HLH or LHL melody, as in the case of gɔːn˧˦˨ (griot with war tomtoms) or kaː˦˨nu˦ (monkey).
Grammar
Number
When referring to humans, number is indicated by suffixing of the noun. In words for humans with a basic CV- stem, the singular suffix is -r̃ú. In words for humans with longer stems, the singular suffix is -nú or apocopated -ń. For plural words for humans, the suffix is -mú or -ḿ, regardless of stem length.
References
Sources
* .
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{{Dogon topics, state=collapsed
Dogon languages
Languages of Mali