Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Western Plains Dogon

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Region
  
Mali, Burkina Faso

Glottolog
  
west2508

Native speakers
  
260,000 (1998)

Language family
  
Niger–Congo Dogon Plains Western Plains Dogon

Dialects
  
Tomo Kan Tengu Kan Togo Kan

ISO 639-3
  
Either: dtm – Tomo Kan dtk – Tene Kan

The Dogon dialects of the western plains below the Bandiagara Escarpment is Mali are mutually intelligible. They are sometimes called the Kan Dogon because they use the word kan (also spelled ) for varieties of speech. The dialects are:

  • Tomo kã
  • Teŋu kã
  • Togo kã
  • The latter two are traditionally subsumed under the name Tene kã (Tene Kan, Tene Tingi), but Hochstetler separates them because the three varieties are about equidistant.

    There are a quarter million speakers of these dialects, about evenly split between Tomo Kan and Tene Kan, making this the most populous of the Dogon languages. There are a few Tomo-speaking villages just across the border in Burkina Faso.

    References

    Western Plains Dogon Wikipedia