San (language)

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The San is spoken today by around 150,000 to 200,000 speakers in northwest Burkina Faso on the border with Mali . The distribution area largely corresponds to the provinces of Sourou and Nayala . In addition to the language name Samo , the literature also contains San and Sane , which denote the two main dialects of North and South Samo. Despite the similar name Samogo , the Samo is not related to the Saomogo Dzun, which is a Western Mande language. The largest settlements in the Samo area are the provincial capitals Toma and Tougan . In the immediate vicinity of the Samo are the Marka-Dafing belonging to the West Mande and the Gur languages Dogon , Lyele, Nuni, Mòoré , Ko and Bwamu.

Samo is an East Mande language . The closest relatives are the Bissa , which is spoken in southeast Burkina Faso, and the Boko / Busa , whose distribution area lies on the border between Nigeria and Benin .

Dialectal structure

According to the current state of research, the dialectal structure of Samo has not been adequately clarified. Some authors assume two main dialects, others three. There are also different names for the individual subdialects. The North Samo (in the region around Tougan) is also referred to in the literature as San and the South Samo (in the region around Toma) also as Sane . Platiel (1974) differentiates between three main dialects and describes them as: Maka , Maya and Matya , Maka corresponds to southern Samo and Maya and Matya together correspond to northern Samo. Overall, it can be said that the language of southern Samo is much more homogeneous than northern Samo. The linguistic differences between the two main varieties only allow mutual understanding to a limited extent.

Sociolinguistic situation

The influence of the Djula and Moore are limited for northern Samo to the larger centers of Tougan, Toéni and Kassoum and the outer borders of the language area. The moors are becoming increasingly influential, especially in the eastern areas of Northern Samo. In the area of ​​southern Samo, the influence of neighboring languages ​​can be classified as rather low. The speakers attribute great prestige to the Samo itself, it is very vital. However, multilingualism is increasing as it is increasingly seen as a socio-economic necessity.

Documentation of the language

So far, there are only a few language descriptions of Samo. To this day, neither a grammatical description nor a dictionary is available for Northern Samo. The South Samo was represented by Platiel in a grammatical description. Kastenholz (1988) has compiled further references on samo in his mandebibliography.

literature

  • Berthelette, John. 2001. Survey Report on the San (Samo) Language (online) (PDF; 4.0 MB).
  • Platiel, Suzanne. 1974. Description du parler samo de Toma Haute-Volta.
  • Kastenholz, Raimund. 1988. Mande languages ​​and linguistics. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.