Mende language
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| Mende | |
|---|---|
| Mɛnde yia Mɛnde yia | |
| Native to | Sierra Leone, Liberia |
| Region | South central Sierra Leone |
|
Native speakers
|
1.5 million (2006)[1] |
|
Niger–Congo
|
|
| Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | men |
| ISO 639-3 | men |
| Glottolog | mend1266[2] |
Mende /ˈmɛndi/[3] (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken 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. Early systematic descriptions of Mende were by F. W. Migeod [4] and Kenneth Crosby.[5]
Written forms
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 alphabet based on the Latin script, and the Mende script is considered a "failed script".[6] The Bible was translated into Mende and published in 1959, in Latin script.
The Latin-based alphabet is: a, b, d, e, ɛ, f, g, gb, h, i, j, k, kp, l, m, n, ny, o, ɔ, p, s, t, u, v, w, y [7]
Mende has seven vowels: a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ, u [8][9]
Mende language in films
Mende was used extensively in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond.
References
- ↑ Mende at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
- ↑ Migeod, F. W. 1908. The Mende language. London
- ↑ Crosby, Kenneth. 1944. An Introduction to the Study of Mende. Cambridge University Press.
- ↑ Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization. In The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García, pp. 23-32. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ↑ Coble, Scott. n.d. "Mende." AboutWorldLanguages.com (accessed 8 October 2014)
- ↑ A Mende Orthography Workshop: Ministry of Education, Freetown, January 21-25, 1980
- ↑ Pemagbi, Joe. 1991. "A guide to Mende orthography." SLADEA.
External links
- Bibliography on Mende
- The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)
- PanAfrican L10n page on Mende, Bandi & Loko
- Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Mende (1916)
- OLAC resources in and about the Mende language
| Official language | |
|---|---|
| Indigenous languages | |
| Creole languages | |
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