Soninke (language)
Soninke ( Soninkanxaane ) | ||
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Spoken in |
Mali , Ivory Coast , Gambia , Guinea-Bissau , Mauritania , Senegal , Burkina Faso | |
speaker | 1,096,800 | |
Linguistic classification |
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Official status | ||
Other official status in |
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Recognized minority / regional language in |
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Language codes | ||
ISO 639 -1 |
- |
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ISO 639 -2 |
snk |
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ISO 639-3 |
Soninke (own name Soninkanxaane ) is the language of the Soninke and is assigned to the Northwest Mande languages within the Niger-Congo languages .
Soninke has 1,096,800 speakers, mainly along the Mauritanian southern border in Mali , in Mauritania and in neighboring areas of Senegal , but also in other West African countries.
The dialektal highly fragmented language had earlier in the West African Sahel region , the function due to the trading activities of the Soninke a common language but of national importance, was in the last centuries of languages such as Mandinka displaced.
The sentence structure is simple, subject - predicate particle - ( object ) verb , noun and adjective clauses. The two aspects are determined by the verb form, words are often formed using derivation .
alphabet
Soninke uses a slightly modified Latin alphabet . The pronunciation of certain graphemes in Senegal is different from that in Mali.
Letter | Pronunciation ( IPA ) | |
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Mali | Senegal | |
a | a | |
b | b | |
c | ʧ | ɕ |
d | d | |
e | e | |
f | f | |
G | ɡ | |
H | H | |
i | i | |
j | ʤ | ʑ |
k | k | |
l | l | |
m | m | |
ny / ñ | ɲ | |
nw / ŋ | ŋ | |
O | O | |
p | p | |
q | ʔ | q |
r | r | |
s | s | |
t | t | |
u | u | |
w | w | |
x | χ | |
y | j | |
' | not used | ʔ |