The
Dogon dialects of the western plains below the
Bandiagara Escarpment
The Bandiagara Escarpment is an escarpment in the Dogon country of Mali. The sandstone cliff rises about above the lower sandy flats to the south. It has a length of approximately .
The area of the escarpment is inhabited today by the Dogon pe ...
is
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 ...
are
mutually intelligible. They are sometimes called the ''Kan'' Dogon because they use the word ''kan'' (also spelled ''kã'') for varieties of speech. The dialects are:
*''Tomo kã''
*''Teŋu kã''
*''Togo kã''
The latter two are traditionally subsumed under the name ''Tene kã'' (Tene Kan, Tene Tingi), but Hochstetler separates them because the three varieties are about equidistant.
There are a quarter million speakers of these dialects, about evenly split between Tomo Kan and Tene Kan, making this the most populous of the Dogon languages. There are a few Tomo-speaking villages just across the border in Burkina Faso.
Phonology
Consonants
* Consonant germination also occurs frequently among sounds .
* can only occur among loanwords.
* is interchangeable with .
* Consonant sound only rarely occurs and in almost absent.
* Consonant sounds are absent, except in loanwords.
* can be realized as a fricative between vowel sounds .
* Sounds only occur from loanwords, and are interchangeable.
* Glottal sound can only occur as an element in some reduplicated forms of vowel-initial words, or between vowels within a word.
Vowels
* In Tomo Kan, an extra central vowel sound is also attested possibly as a result of preceding a nasalised segment or a . It may also regularly be pronounced as as well.
References
* .
*
{{Dogon topics, state=collapsed
Dogon languages
Languages of Mali
Languages of Burkina Faso