Maninka
Language · official in 1 country
Maninka was the language of court and government in the Mali Empire. Also called Malinke, and more exactly Eastern Maninka, it is a set of closely related Manding languages and dialects with four tones, written in Latin letters and in N'Ko, and it appears as Maninkakan among Mali's national languages.
The language on record
- ISO 639-3
- MYQ
- Script
- Not recorded
- Family
- Mande
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Maninka is official
Mali is the only country on record for Maninka. In Guinea, where it is the mother tongue of the Upper Guinea region, the record gives it no official status.
Official beside Maninka
About Maninka
Where Maninka is spoken
It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people of Guinea, where 3.1 million speak it and it is the main language of Upper Guinea. It is also spoken in southwestern Mali, beside the closely related Bambara, and in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it has no official status.
What a falling tone marks
The Wudala dialect of the Guinean highlands, which speakers of every dialect there understand, has four tones: high, low, rising and falling. Definiteness is marked by a floating falling tone and not by a word, so kɔ̀nɔ̀ is a bird and kɔ̀nɔ᷈ the bird. Vowels may be long or short, oral or nasal, and after a nasal vowel b turns to m, j to ɲ and l to n. Plurals show it: nouns ending in an oral vowel take -lu, nasal ones -nu.
How Maninka is written
In Guinea it has an official Latin script, an older official Latin orthography, and N'Ko. In Mali, activists teach literacy in N'Ko to speakers of Manding languages, Maninkakan among them.
Common questions
Questions about Maninka
Is Maninka the same as Malinke?
Yes. Malinke is another name for it; Eastern Maninka is the more precise term.
How is definiteness shown in Maninka?
By tone. A floating falling tone added to a noun makes it definite, so a bird and the bird differ only in pitch.
Why is Maninka linked to the Mali Empire?
It was the language of the court and of government in the empire.