Key facts
- Native to
- Mali , Senegal , Ivory Coast , Gambia , Mauritania , Guinea-Bissau , Guinea , Ghana , Burkina Faso
- Region
- West Africa
- Ethnicity
- Soninke
- Native speakers
- 2.3 million (2017–2021)
- Language family
- Niger–Congo ? Mande Western Northwestern Soninke–Bobo Soninke–Bozo Soninke
- Dialects
- Azer
- Writing system
- Latin , Arabic ( Ajami ) , N'ti script
- Official language in
- Mali
- Iso 639 2
- snk
- Iso 639 3
- snk
- Glottolog
- soni1259
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- modern language
- Subclass of
- Mande
- Country
- Guinea
Show 8 more facts
- indigenous to
- Kolda
- writing system
- Latin script
- number of speakers, writers, or signers
- 1096795
- topic's main category
- Category:Soninke language
- P10369
- Belarus
- native label
- Sooninkanxanne
- different from
- Soninke people
via Wikidata · CC0
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The Soninke language (Soninke: Sooninkanxanne, سࣷونِکَنْخَنّࣹ), also known as Serakhulle or Azer or Maraka, is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. The language has an estimated 2.3 million speakers, primarily located in Mali and Mauritania, and also (in order of numerical importance of the communities) in Senegal, Ivory Coast, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. It enjoys the status of a national language in Mauritania, Mali, Senegal and The Gambia.
Phonology
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Soninke” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.