Dogon languages
| Dogon | |
|---|---|
| Ethnicity: | Dogon people |
| Geographic distribution: |
Mali |
| Linguistic classification: |
Niger–Congo?
|
| Subdivisions: |
|
| Glottolog: | dogo1299 |
Map of Dogon languages (in Russian)
The heavy grey dashed line is the escarpment. The red dashed line the Mali–Burkina border.
East: Jamsay; the grey N of it is uninhabited, and the strip N of that is Tɔrɔ tegu
South-center: Tene (Teŋu & Togo)
Southwest: Tomo-kan
Center: Tɔrɔ sɔɔ below the escarpment, Tɔmmɔ sɔɔ & Donno sɔ above
West: Mombo and Ampari (the city to the west of Mombo is Mopti)
Northwest: Dogulu and Bunoge
Northwest, near the red: Tiranige
North: Bunoge
The green bits on the escarpment (SW to NE) are unknown, Yanda, Tebul, Naŋa
Bangi-me
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|
The Dogon languages are a small, close-knit language family spoken by the Dogon of Mali, which are generally believed to belong to the larger Niger–Congo family. There are about 600,000 speakers of a dozen languages. They are tonal languages -- most, like Dogul, having two tones; some, like Donno So, having three. The basic word order is subject–object–verb.
The evidence linking Dogon to the Niger–Congo family is weak, and their place within the family, assuming they do belong, is not clear. Various theories have been proposed, placing them in Gur, Mande, or as an independent branch, the last now being the preferred approach. The Dogon languages show no remnants of the noun class system characteristic of much of Niger–Congo, leading linguists to conclude that they likely diverged from Niger–Congo very early.
Roger Blench comments,
and,
The Bamana and Fula languages have exerted significant influence on Dogon, due to their close cultural and geographical ties.
Blench (2015) suggests that Bangime and Dogon languages may have a substratum from a "missing" branch of Nilo-Saharan that had split off relatively early from Proto-Nilo-Saharan, and tentatively calls that branch "Plateau."
The Dogon consider themselves a single ethnic group, but recognize that their languages are different. In Dogon cosmology, Dogon constitutes six of the twelve languages of the world (the others being Fulfulde, Mooré, Bambara, Bozo, and Tamasheq). Jamsay is thought to be the original Dogon language, but the Dogon "recognise a myriad of tiny distinctions even between parts of villages and sometimes individuals, and strive to preserve these." (Hochstetler 2004:18)
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Wikipedia