Also Known As: Bamana,Bamanakan,Bambara
Description:
Bambara, also known as Bamanankan in the language itself (literally "the language of the Bamanan"), is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people (including second language users). The differences between Bambara and Dioula are minimal. Dioula is a language spoken or understood by a lesser number of people in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, and The Gambia. The Bambara language is the mother tongue of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 2,700,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca in Mali (it is estimated that about 80% of the population speaks it as a first or second language). It is an SOV language and has two tones.
Bambara belongs to a group of closely-related languages called Manding, within the larger Mandé group.
It uses seven vowels a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ and u (the letters approximate their IPA equivalents). Writing was introduced during the French occupation and literacy is a major issue especially in rural areas. Although written literature is only slowly evolving (due to the predominance of French as the "language of the educated"), there exists a wealth of oral literature, which is often tales of kings and heroes. This oral literature is mainly..... full article at Wikipedia |