Mandinka

Where it’s spoken

Mandinka is the most widely spoken language in The Gambia, the language of the Mandinka people, and a major language in Senegal (especially Casamance), Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. It is part of the broader Manding dialect continuum that includes Bambara (Mali) and Maninka (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia), with which it is partially mutually intelligible.

What it sounds like

Mandinka has two tones (high and low) and seven vowels with phonemic length and nasalization. It uses prenasalized consonants and a sequence of consonants that often differ in their initial form (mutated forms after certain prefixes). The syllable structure is relatively simple.

How it’s written

Mandinka is written today in three scripts: a Latin orthography developed by missionaries and used in education, Ajami (Arabic script) for religious texts, and the N’Ko alphabet — an indigenous script created in 1949 by Souleymane Kanté for Manding languages.

History

Mandinka was the language of the medieval Mali Empire of Sundiata Keita, one of the largest and richest of West African states. Its oral history is preserved by jeli (griot) storytellers in epic chants like the Sundiata legend.