Maninka

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Maninka
Maninka, Maninkakan, Malinke, Malinka
Spoken in: Guinea, Mali, Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire
Total speakers: 3,300,000
Language family: Niger-Congo
 Mande
  Western Mande
   Manding
    Maninka 
Writing system: N'Ko, Latin 
Official status
Official language in: Guinea, Mali
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: none
ISO 639-2: man
ISO 639-3: variously:
myg – Maninka, Forest
mku – Maninka, Konyanka
emk – Maninkaka, Eastern
mzj – Manya
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Maninka is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo languages. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people and is spoken by 3,300,000 speakers in Guinea and Mali, where the closely related Bambara is a national language, and also in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, where it has no official status. The Ethnologue lists the following varieties, but notes that the distinctions between them are largely uncertain:

  • Eastern Maninkakan, also called Malinke or Maninka, spoken by 1,890,000 speakers in Guinea and c.200,000 in Liberia and Sierra Leone;
  • Maninka, Konyanka, spoken by 128,000 speakers in Guinea;
  • Maninka, Sankaran, also called Faranah, spoken in Guinea;
  • Forest Maninka, a part of the Maninka-Mori group together with Wojenaka, Worodougou, Koro, Koyaga, and Mahou, spoken by 15,000 speakers in Côte d'Ivoire.

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