Zialo

Zialo (Ziolo)
Spoken in	Guinea
speaker	25,000
Linguistic ; classification	Niger-Congo Mande West Mande southwest Mende-Loma Mende – Bandi Bandi-Zialo; ; ; ; ; Zialo ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	zil

Zialo (self-identification Ziolo ) is a language spoken by the Zialo people in Guinea .

The Zialo language belongs to the southwestern group of the Mandes languages of the Niger – Congo language family and is spoken by around 25,000 people who reside in the Macenta Province in southeastern Guinea. The Zialo area includes over 50 villages (including two sub-prefectural centers). Almost a third of all Zialo native speakers now live in the neighboring cities of Macenta and Gekedou , as well as in the capital Conakry . The Zialo does not have its own writing system; people only use French in all official matters.

Zialo has long been considered a distant dialect of the Loma , but there are significant differences between the two languages. The tonology and phonetics of the Zialo are similar to the Loma, but the vocabulary and morphological system of the Zialo are closer to the Bandi and Mende . Zialo is characterized by the extensive use of nasal vowels and consonants, the wide system of initial consonant alternations, a large number of analytic verb constructions of time and aspect, and over 15 types of different pronouns. Zialo speakers name five dialects of their language: Bayawa, Wolo-Ziolo, Woyjawa, Kelighigo, and Lawolozu, the last of which is the most specific.

literature

Babaev, Kirill . Zialo: the Newly-Discovered Mande Language of Guinea . Munich: Lincom, 2011. 260 pp. ISBN 978-3-862880-16-4 .

Web links

The Zialo language on the 'Mande languages' portal

Individual evidence

^ Zialo was discovered and studied by the Moscow-based linguist Kirill Babaev, member of the Russian Linguistic Expedition to Guinea, in January – February 2010.

[1] Zialo was discovered and studied by the Moscow-based linguist Kirill Babaev, member of the Russian Linguistic Expedition to Guinea, in January – February 2010.