Mande languages


The Mande languages (Mandén, Manding; ) are a group of languages spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples. These include; Maninka, Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Jula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are around 60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people, chiefly in; Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Ghana and also in northwestern Nigeria and northern Benin.

Mande
Western Sudanic
EthnicityMandé peoples
Geographic
distribution		West Africa
Linguistic classificationNiger–Congo?
  • Mande
Proto-languageProto-Mande
Subdivisions
  • Western Mande
  • Eastern Mande
ISO 639-5dmn
Linguasphere00- (phylozone)
Glottologmand1469

The Mande languages show a few lexical similarities with the Atlantic–Congo language family, so together they have been proposed as parts of a larger Niger–Congo language family since the 1950s. However, the Mande languages lack the noun-class morphology that is the primary identifying feature of the Atlantic–Congo languages. Accordingly, linguists increasingly treat Mande and Atlantic–Congo as independent language families.

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