Mangree (pronunciation approximately ) is a poorly attested, unclassified, and extinct language of the interior of West Africa, possibly from what is now

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 ...

. It is only attested in a list of a dozen words collected in the late 18th century.Fodor, István 1975

789 __NOTOC__ Year 789 ( DCCLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 789 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar ...

''Pallas und andere afrikanische Vokabularien vor dem 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Forschungsgeschichte'' There is some indication that it might have been a

Kru language The Kru languages are spoken by the Kru people from the southeast of Liberia to the west of Ivory Coast. Classification According to Güldemann (2018), Kru lacks sufficient lexical resemblances and noun class resemblances to conclude a relation ...

, but there is not enough data to classify it.

Location

The Mangree were reported to live adjacent to the Kanga, not far from the Mandinga and Amina. A large river formed the border between the Mangree and the

Gien Gien () is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France. Gien is on the river Loire, from Orléans. Gien station has rail connections to Montargis, Nevers and Paris. The town was bought for the royal domain by Philip II of Franc ...

. Fodor believes that the location was somewhere around 7° north latitude and that the river was either the

Sassandra Sassandra is a town in southern Ivory Coast. It is a sub-prefecture of and the seat of Sassandra Department. It is also a commune and the seat of Gbôklé Region in Bas-Sassandra District. Sassandra lies on the Gulf of Guinea at the mouth of th ...

or the Bandama.

Word list

Fodor reports the following 11 words: :god: ''yankombum'' ('jankombum') :sky: ''tata'' :sun: ''lataa'' :human: ''mia'' :foot: ''trippi'' :head: ''tri'' :man: ''laniu'' :woman: ''auvee'' ('auwee') :child: ''pikkeninne'' :father: ''amee'' :mother: ''pakkabel'' A brief summary of the source repeats 'head', 'man', 'woman' and adds ''ichi'' ('itchi') 'water'.R.G. Latham, 1848, 'On the present state and recent progress of Ethnographical Philology', in ''Report of the seventeenth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science'', p. 176.

Classification

The Mangree language was said to be little different from

, which would suggest it was Kru. However, the known vocabulary is not obviously Kru, at least as it was recited and transcribed. The informants were Kanga (also Kru) who said they spoke the language well. Fodor suggests that the word for God may be the same as Twi ' 'God'. The word for 'father' resembles Ewe ''ame'' 'human' (and possibly came from a translation of the phrase 'heavenly Father', in which case ''tata'' might be 'father' and ''amee'' 'sky'), while the word for 'human' resembles Gien ''me'' 'human'. The word for 'head' resembles both Twi (with an ''i'' vowel) and several Kru languages (with a ''u'' vowel). Fodor suggests that the word for 'foot' may be a compound, 'head of the leg'. The word for 'child' resembles Portuguese ''pequenino'' (and English ''piccaninny''), which is widespread in West Africa pidgins and creoles. Fodor was not able to find parallels for the other words in Kru or Kwa languages. The vocabulary that resembles Twi may be loanwords.

References

{{reflist

External links

* Mangree section of ''Pallas und andere afrikanische Vokabularien vor dem 19. Jahrhundert'' Unclassified languages of Africa Languages of Ivory Coast Extinct languages of Africa