Mende (language)

Mende (Mɛnde yia)
Spoken in	Sierra Leone , Liberia
speaker	Total:> 2.065 million ; Sierra Leone: 2.065 million ; Liberia:?
Linguistic ; classification	Niger Congo Languages Mande languages West Mande Southwest Mande Mende ;
Language codes
ISO 639 -1	-
ISO 639 -2	men
ISO 639-3	men

Mende (Mɛnde yia) is a language that is mostly spoken in Sierra Leone , but there are also numerous speakers in neighboring Liberia . In 2015, more than 2.065 million people in Sierra Leone, almost 30 percent of the total population, named Mende as their main language.

It is from the Mende and other ethnic groups as a lingua franca used in southern Sierra Leone.

Mende is a tonal language that is one of the Mande languages of the Niger-Congo family of languages . In 1921, Kìsmi Kamára developed the Mende script , a syllable script to teach his compatriots to write. This was in common use for a long time, but was gradually replaced by the Latin script.

The Mende language was used in the films Amistad and Blood Diamond .

literature

Peace Corps (Ed.): Sierra Leone Mende Language Manual. Freetown 1989, sierra-leone.org (PDF)

Web links

Language dissemination, on Ethnologue.com (English)
Alphabet of the Mende (English)
Information about the languages of the region (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census national analytical report. (PDF) Statistics Sierra Leone, October 2017, p. 89 ff.

[1] Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census national analytical report. (PDF) Statistics Sierra Leone, October 2017, p. 89 ff.