Mende
Sign in to saveMende language, natively spoken in Liberia and Sierra-Leone
Key facts
- Native to
- Sierra Leone , Liberia , Guinea
- Region
- South central Sierra Leone
- Ethnicity
- Mende people
- Native speakers
- 2.5 million (2020–2021)
- Language family
- Niger–Congo ? Mande Western Southwestern Mende–Loma Mende–Bandi Mende–Loko Mende
- Dialects
- Ko Kpa Sewawa Wanjama
- Writing system
- Latin , Mende Kikakui script
- Iso 639 2
- men
- Iso 639 3
- men
- Glottolog
- mend1266
via Wikipedia infobox
~3 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Mende /ˈmɛndi/ (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia and Guinea. 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 language family. Early systematic descriptions of Mende were by F. W. Migeod and Kenneth Crosby. Ethel Aginsky decoded the language in her doctoral work.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Mende” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.