Maninka (also known as Malinke), or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande language family. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people in Guinea, where it is spoken by 3,300,000 people and is the main language in the

Upper Guinea Upper Guinea is a geographical term used in several contexts: # Upper Guinea (french: Haute-Guinée) is one of the four geographic regions of the Republic of Guinea, being east of Futa Jalon, north of Forest Guinea, and bordering Mali. The popula ...

region, and 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 ...

, where the closely related Bambara is a

national language A national language is a language (or language variant, e.g. dialect) that has some connection—de facto or de jure—with a nation. There is little consistency in the use of this term. One or more languages spoken as first languages in the te ...

, as well as in Liberia,

Senegal Senegal,; Wolof: ''Senegaal''; Pulaar: 𞤅𞤫𞤲𞤫𞤺𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭 (Senegaali); Arabic: السنغال ''As-Sinighal'') officially the Republic of Senegal,; Wolof: ''Réewum Senegaal''; Pulaar : 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 ...

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

and Ivory Coast, where it has no official status. It was the language of court and government during the Mali Empire.

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 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 N'Ko () is a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Mandé languages of West Africa. The term ''N'Ko'', which means ''I say'' in all Mandé languages, is also used for the Mandé literary standard written ...

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 {{navboxes, , list= {{Languages of Côte d'Ivoire {{Languages of Guinea {{Languages of Liberia {{Languages of Mali {{Languages of Senegal {{Languages of Sierra Leone {{Mande languages Manding languages Languages of Guinea Languages of Mali Languages of Liberia Languages of Senegal Languages of Sierra Leone