Escarpment Dogon

Escarpment Dogon
Native to	Mali
Region	Bandiagara Escarpment
Native speakers	unknown (160,000 cited 1998)
Language family	Niger–Congo Dogon Escarpment Dogon
Standard forms	Tɔrɔ sɔɔ
Dialects	Tɔrɔ sɔɔ Tɔmmɔ sɔɔ Donno sɔ
Official status
Official language in	Mali
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously: dts – Tɔrɔ sɔɔ dds – Donno sɔ dto – Tɔmmɔ sɔ
Glottolog	esca1235

Escarpment Dogon is a continuum of Dogon dialects of the Bandiagara Escarpment, including the standard language. There are three principal dialects:

• Toro So Tɔrɔ sɔɔ, called Bomu Tegu in the plains languages and also known as Dɔgɔsɔ, is the standard variety of Dogon, which is one of thirteen official languages of Mali.
• Tommo So Tɔmmɔ sɔ, called Tombo so by Bondum Dom speakers, is spoken in a region from Kasa to Bandiagara. It is more linguistically conservative than Toro So.

The third dialect commonly listed is two subdialects without a common name:

• Donno So Donno sɔ in the Bandiagara area, and
• Kamma So Kamma sɔ also known as Kamba So, in the Kamba area.

Hochstetler confirms that these are intelligible with each other, but not with the more populous varieties of Dogon on the neighboring plains.

While Toro So was chosen as the official standard, because it has the most in common with the largest number of Dogon languages due to its central location, and is used in educational and official contexts, Jamsay Dogon is the prestige variety and is the variety used for radio broadcasts.

References

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