Maninka language

Maninka (Malinke), or more precisely Eastern Maninka, is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger–Congo languages. It is the mother tongue of the Malinké people and is spoken by 3,300,000 speakers in Guinea, where it is the main language in the Upper Guinea region, and Mali, where the closely related Bambara is a national language, as well as in Liberia, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast, where it has no official status. It was the language of court and government used during the Mali empire.

The Wudala dialect of Eastern Maninkaka, spoken in the central highlands of Guinea and comprehensible to speakers of all dialects in that country, has the following phonemic inventory. (Apart from tone, which is not written, sounds are given in orthography, as IPA values are not certain.)

There are two moraic tones, high and low, which in combination form rising and falling tones.

The marker for definiteness is a falling floating tone: /kɔ̀nɔ̀/ 'a bird' (LL), /kɔ̀nɔ᷈/ 'the bird' (LLHL, perhaps [kɔ̌nɔ̂]); /kɔ́nɔ̀/ 'a belly' (HL), /kɔ́nɔ᷈/ 'the belly' (HLHL, perhaps [kɔ̂nɔ̂]).

Vowel qualities are /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/. All may be long or short, oral or nasal: /ii ee ɛɛ aa ɔɔ oo uu/ and /in en ɛn an ɔn on un/. (It may be that all nasal vowels are long.) Nasal vowels nasalize some following consonants.