Soninke
Sooninkanxanne
Spoken in	Mali, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea
Region	West Africa
Total speakers	1,096,795
Language family	Niger-Congo ? Mande Western Mande Northwestern Soninke-Bobo Soninke-Bozo Soninke
Language codes
ISO 639-1	None
ISO 639-2	snk
ISO 639-3	snk
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Soninke language (Soninke: Sooninkanxanne^[1]) is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. The language has an estimated 1,096,795 speakers, primarily located in Mali, and also (in order of numerical importance of the communities) in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. It enjoys the status of a national language in Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania.

The language is relatively homogeneous, with only slight phonological, lexical, and grammatical variations.

Linguistically, its nearest relatives are the Bozo languages, centered around the Inner Niger Delta.

It is thought that the Imraguen language is a dialect of Soninke but this is not certain.

[edit] References

1. ^ Lexicon Soninke-French-English

[edit] External links

• Ethnologue report on Soninke
• PanAfriL10n page on Soninke
• Soninkara.org: La langue soninké
• Collection of documents in Soninke

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