Mende language
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| Mende Mɛnde yia  |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Sierra Leone, Liberia | |
| Region: | South central Sierra Leone | |
| Total speakers: | 1,480,000 | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Mande Western Central-Southwestern Southwestern Mende-Loma Mende-Bandi Mende |
|
| Writing system: | Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | men | |
| ISO 639-3: | men | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Mende (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken both by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.
Mende is a tonal language belonging to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. In 1921, Kisimi Kamara invented a syllabary for Mende he called Kikakui (
). The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an orthography using the Latin alphabet.
It was used thoroughly in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond.
[edit] External links
- Ethnologue entry for Mende
- Bibiliography on Mende
- The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)
- PanAfrican L10n page on Mende, Bandi & Loko
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