Ethnos

Mande

Mande (or Manding) is the name of a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka and Bambara. The family has over one million speakers, chiefly in Gambia, Senegal and Guinea Bissau. This linguistic group is part of the Niger-Congo family.

The group was first recognized in 1854 by Koelle in his Polyglotta Africana. He mentioned 13 languages under the heading North-Western High-Sudan Family, or Mandéga Family of Languages. In 1901 Maurice Delafosse made a distinction of two groups in his Essai de manuel pratique de la langue mandé ou mandingue. He speaks of a northern group mandé-tan and a southern group mandé-fu. This distinction was basically done only because the languages in the north use the expression tan for ten whereas the southern group use fu. In 1924 L. Tauxier notes that this distinction is not well founded and there is at least a third subgroup he called mandé-bu. It is not until 1950 when A. Prost supports this view and gives further details. In 1958 Welmers publishes an article The Mande Languages where he divides the languages into three subgroups - North-West, South and East. His conclusion was based on lexicostatistic research. Greenberg follows this distinction 1963 in The Languages of Africa. Long (1971) and G. Galtier (1980) follow the distinction into three groups but with notable differences.

***