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. Ma ...

is a multilingual country. The languages spoken there reflect ancient settlement patterns, migrations, and its long history. ''Ethnologue'' counts more than 80 languages. Of these,

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

is the

official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

and Bambara is the most widely spoken. All together 13 of the indigenous languages of Mali have the legal status of

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 ...

Language usage

Statue de Patrice Émérite Lumumba - Bamako

, which introduced during the colonial period, was retained as the official language at independence and is used in government and formal education. Estimates of the number of people who actually speak French are low. Figures estimated in 1986 give a number of 386,000 speakers of French in Mali, derived from the numbers of school attendees.Anne Lafage. French in Africa. Carol Sanders (ed.) French Today: Language in Its Social Context. pp 215-238. Cambridge University Press (1993) p. 217. This cites a report by the Haut Council du Francophonie, Bull. du FIPF (1986), pp. 10-12. This would mean roughly 21% of the population speak French, by 1986 figures, a number considerably lower than those who speak Bambara. Almost all people who speak French in Mali speak it as a second language. 1993 estimates are that there are only around 9,000 Malian speakers of French as a first language. French is more understood in urban centres, with 1976 figures showing a 36.7% "Francophone" rate in urban areas, but only an 8.2% rate in rural areas. French usage is gender weighted as well, with 1984 figures showing 17.5% percent of males speaking French, but only 4.9% of women. Bambara ( bm, Bamanankan), a

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 ...

language (in the Mande family) is said to be spoken by 80% of the population as a first or second language. It is spoken mainly in central and Southern Mali. Bambara and two other very closely related Manding languages Malinke or Maninkakan in the southwest and Kassonke (in the region of Kayes in the west), are among the 13 national languages. It is used as a trade language in Mali between language groups. (Bambara is also very close to the

Dyula language Dyula (or Jula, Dioula, ''Julakan'' ߖߎ߬ߟߊ߬ߞߊ߲) is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of ...

( dyu, Jula or ; french: Dioula), spoken mainly in

Côte d'Ivoire 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 ...

and

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana t ...

. The name "Jula" is actually a Manding word meaning "trader.") Other Mande languages (not in the Manding group) include Soninke (in the region of Kayes in western Mali) and the Bozo languages (along the middle

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagesSenufo in the Sikasso region (south), Fula ( ff, Fulfulde; french: Peul) as a widespread trade language in the

Mopti Mopti ( Bambara: ߡߏߕߌ tr. Moti) is a town and an urban commune in the Inner Niger Delta region of Mali. The town is the capital of the Mopti Cercle and the Mopti Region. Situated 630 km northeast of Bamako, the town lies at the confl ...

region and beyond, the Songhay languages along the Niger, the Dogon languages of ''Pays Dogon'' or “Dogon country” in central Mali, Tamasheq in the eastern part of Mali's

Sahara , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

in its western part. Thirteen of the most widely spoken indigenous languages are considered "

s." Most formal education for the deaf in Mali uses

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expre ...

, introduced to West Africa by the deaf American missionary Andrew Foster. There are two other sign languages in Mali. One,

Tebul Sign Language Tebul Sign Language is a village sign language of the village of Uluban in the Dogon region of Mali, among speakers of Tebul Dogon. See also *Bamako Sign Language Bamako Sign Language, also known as Malian Sign Language, or LaSiMa (''Langue ...

, is found in a village with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Another,

Bamako Sign Language Bamako Sign Language, also known as Malian Sign Language, or LaSiMa (''Langue des Signes Malienne''), is a sign language that developed outside the Malian educational system, in the urban tea-circles of Bamako where deaf men gathered after work. I ...

, developed in the after-work tea circles of the cities; it is threatened by the educational use of ASL.

Language descriptions

Most of the languages of Mali are among the

Mande languages The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples and include Maninka, Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Dioula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are "60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 milli ...

, which is generally accepted as a branch of Niger–Congo, Africa's largest

language family A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...

. Non-Mande languages include the

Dogon languages 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, ...

, perhaps another Niger–Congo branch, and the

Senufo languages The Senufo or Senufic languages (''Senoufo'' in French) has around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west o ...

, which are unquestionably part of that family. Mande, Senufo, and Dogon stand out among Niger–Congo because of their divergent SOV basic word order. The

Gur languages The Gur languages, also known as Central Gur or Mabia, belong to the Niger–Congo languages. They are spoken in the Sahelian and savanna regions of West Africa, namely: in most areas of Burkina Faso, and in south-central Mali, northeastern Iv ...

are represented by Bomu on the

Bani River The Bani River is the principal tributary of the Niger River in Mali. The river is formed from the confluence of the Baoulé and Bagoé rivers some east of Bamako and it merges with the Niger near Mopti. Its length is about . Geography The ...

of Mali and Burkina Faso. Fulfulde, spoken throughout West Africa, is a member of the Senegambian branch. Other language families include

Afro-Asiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic s ...

, represented by the

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–19 ...

language Tamasheq and by Arabic, and the Songhay languages, which have traditionally been classified as

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50–60 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. ...

but may constitute an independent language family.

Spoken languages

The following table gives a summary of the 63 spoken languages reported by ''Ethnologue'' (there are also 3 sign languages): *

First language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother to ...

/ mother tongue speakers. Figures from ''Ethnologue''. **

Second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ea ...

or additional language speakers. It is difficult to get accurate figures for this category.

Language Policies & Planning

General

French is the official language. According to the Loi 96-049 of 1996 thirteen indigenous languages are recognised by the government as

national languages 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 ...

Bamanankan Bambara (Arabic script: ), also known as Bamana ( N'Ko script: ) or Bamanankan (), is a lingua franca and national language of Mali spoken by perhaps 15 million people, natively by 5 million Bambara people and about 10 million second-languag ...

, Bomu, Bozo, Dɔgɔsɔ,

Fulfulde Fula ,Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student’s Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 30 million people as a set of various dialects in a continuum that st ...

Hassaniya Arabic Hassānīya ( ar, حسانية '; also known as , , , , and ''Maure'') is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic spoken by Mauritanian Arabs and the Sahrawi. It was spoken by the Beni Ḥassān Bedouin tribes, who extended their authority over most of ...

, Mamara, Maninkakan, Soninke, Soŋoy, Syenara, Tamasheq, Xaasongaxanŋo.Loi 96-049 Portant modalités de promotion des langues nationales This superseded the Decree 159 PG-RM of 19 July 1982 (Article 1).

Education

French is part of the standard school curriculum. There is a new policy to use Malian languages in the first grades and transition to French. Activists are also teaching literacy to speakers of Manding languages (Bambara, Malinke, Maninkakan, Dyula) in the standardized

N'Ko 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 ...

form.

References

Ethnologue listing for MaliPanAfrican L10n page on Mali
{{Africa in topic, Languages of