Mende language
| Mende | |
|---|---|
Mɛnde yia  |
|
| Native to | Sierra Leone, Liberia |
| Region | South central Sierra Leone |
| Native speakers | 1,480,000 (2006) |
| Language family |
Niger–Congo ?
|
| Writing system | Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | men |
| ISO 639-3 | men |
Mende /ˈmɛndi/[1] (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.
Mende is a tonal language belonging to the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo language family. Early systematic descriptions of Mende were by F. W. Migeod [2] and Kenneth Crosby.[3]
In 1921, Kisimi Kamara invented a syllabary for Mende he called Kikakui (
). The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an alphabet based on the Latin script, and the Mende script is considered a "failed script".[4] The Bible was translated into Mende and published in 1959, in Latin script.
It was used extensively in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond.
References [edit]
- ^ Laurie Bauer, 2007, The Linguistics Student’s Handbook, Edinburgh
- ^ Migeod, F. W. 1908. The Mende language. London
- ^ Crosby, Kenneth. 1944. An Introduction to the Study of Mende. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of Scripts in West Africa for Ethnic Revitalization. In The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, ed. by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García, pp. 23-32. New York: Oxford University Press.
External links [edit]
- Ethnologue entry for Mende
- Bibliography on Mende
- The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)
- PanAfrican L10n page on Mende, Bandi & Loko
- Portions of the Book of Common Prayer in Mende (1916)
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