Soninke language

Soninke
Sooninkanxanne
Native to Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ghana
Ethnicity Soninke people
Native speakers
 2.1 million (2006–2011)[1]
Niger–Congo

  • Mande

    • Western Mande
      • Northwestern
        • Soninke–Bobo
          • Soninke–Bozo
            • Soninke
Language codes
ISO 639-2 snk
ISO 639-3 snk
Glottolog soni1259[2]

The Soninke language (Soninke: Sooninkanxanne[3]) is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. The language has an estimated 1,096,795 speakers, primarily located in Mali, and also (in order of numerical importance of the communities) in Senegal, Ivory Coast, The Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Ghana. It enjoys the status of a national language in Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania.

The language is relatively homogeneous, with only slight phonological, lexical, and grammatical variations.

Linguistically, its nearest relatives are the Bozo languages, centered on the Inner Niger Delta.

It is may be that the Imraguen and Nemadi are dialects of Soninke, but this is not certain.

References

  1. ↑ Soninke at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Soninke". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. ↑ Lexicon Soninke-French-English


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