Bambara language
The title of this article is ambiguous. For other meanings, see Bambara (disambiguation).
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Phonetics and phonology (vowels, consonants, tones - Bambara is a register tone language!), grammar (word formation, morphology, syntax), vocabulary, examples (cf. template language)
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Bambara, also known as Bamanankan, is a Mande language spoken in Mali in West Africa. Together with Dioula and Malinke, it is part of the Manding dialect continuum (dialects of the same language that merge into each other), which is understood and spoken to varying degrees by about 30 million people in ten countries in West Africa. The Dioula of Côte d'Ivoire is a simplified Bambara influenced by Malinke, while the Dioula of Burkina Faso is almost identical to Bambara.
The Bambara is the central variant of the Manding and can be used almost everywhere in Mali, in most regions of Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast as well as in the eastern halves of Guinea and Senegal.
The script used is either the Latin-based African alphabet or the proprietary N'Ko script. The language code is bm or bam (according to ISO 639).
Questions and Answers
Q: What language is Bambara?
A: Bambara is a language from Mali.
Q: How many people speak Bambara?
A: More than 6 000 000 people (including second language users) speak it.
Q: Is Bambara similar to Dioula?
A: Yes, Bambara is very similar to Dioula.
Q: What racial group speaks the Bambara language mainly?
A: The Bambara language is spoken mainly by people in the Bambara racial group. About 2,700,000 people are in this group, but Bambara is also used by other racial groups in Mali.
Q: What type of language is it?
A: It is an SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) language and it has two tones (pitches). There are seven vowels - a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ and u.
Q: When did writing start for the Bambarans ?
A: Writing started during the period of French rule.
