Native to Sierra Leone, Liberia ISO 639-2 men | Native speakers 1.5 million (2006) | |
Region South central Sierra Leone Language family Niger–Congo
Mande
Western Mande
Southwestern
Mende–Loma
Mende–Bandi
Mende–Loko
Mende Writing system Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary | ||
Mende /ˈmɛndi/ (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.
Contents
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 and Kenneth Crosby.
Written forms
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". The Bible was translated into Mende and published in 1959, in Latin script.
The Latin-based alphabet is: a, b, d, e, ɛ, f, g, gb, h, i, j, k, kp, l, m, n, ny, o, ɔ, p, s, t, u, v, w, y
Mende has seven vowels: a, e, ɛ, i, o, ɔ, u
Mende language in films
Mende was used extensively in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond, and was the subject of the documentary film The Language You Cry In.