The Dogon languages are spoken by the Dogon in Mali. There are about 600,000 speakers with at least 15 varieties, some of them mutually unintelligible. They are tonal languages with two level tones. The Dogon village of Banani. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Tone (linguistics). ...

The place of Dogon inside the Niger-Congo languages is not clear. Various theories have been proposed, placing them in the Gur, the Mande or an independent branch, the latter now being the preferred theory. The Dogon languages show few remnants of a noun class system (one example is that human nouns take a distinct plural suffix), leading linguists to conclude that Dogon is likely to have diverged from Niger-Congo very early. The basic word order is Subject Object Verb. Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... The Gur languages belong to the Niger-Congo languages. ... Mande refers to: the Mandé people of western Africa the Mande or Mandinka people of western Africa any of the Mande languages the Mande or Mandinka language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. ... In linguistic typology, Subject Object Verb (SOV) is the type of languages in which the subject, object, and verb of a sentence appear (usually) in that order. ...

The Bambara and Fula languages have exerted significant influence on Dogon, due to their close cultural and geographical ties. Bambara, also known as Bamanankan in the language itself, is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people (including second language users). ... The Fula language is a language of West Africa, spoken by the Fula people from Senegal to Cameroon and Sudan. ...

Dialects

Dogon has traditionally been described as a single language; however, Hochstetler et. al. (2004) estimated that the Dogon language family consists actually of at least 17 highly internally divided languages, and later fieldwork by Rogber Blench tends to support this. Bangi-me (Bangeri-me), formerly considered a northwestern Dogon dialect, falls entirely outside the group, according to Blench (2005b).

The best-studied Dogon language is Toro So (Tɔrɔ Sɔɔ), the speech variety of Sanga, due to Marcel Griaule's studies there and due to the fact that Toro So has been selected by the Malian government for development. However, the plains languages - tene Ka, Tomo Ka, and Jamsay - have the largest population, and Jamsay and Tombo are considered the most conservative varieties. Sanga or Sangha is a town in the Dogon Country region of Mali, lying east of Bandiagara at the top of an escarpment. ... Marcel Griaule (1898 – 1965) was a French anthropologist known for his studies with the Dogon of West Africa and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France. ... Jam Sai (sometimes spelled Jamsay) is a dialect of the Dogon languages spoken in Mali. ... Tommo So is a dialect of Dogon spoken in Mali. ...

References

• Bendor-Samuel, John & Olsen, Elizabeth J. & White, Ann R. (1989) 'Dogon', in Bendor-Samuel & Rhonda L. Hartell (eds.) The Niger-Congo languages — A classification and description of Africa's largest language family (pp. 169-177). Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
• Bertho, J. (1953) 'La place des dialectes dogon de la falaise de Bandiagara parmi les autres groupes linguistiques de la zone soudanaise,' Bulletin de l'IFAN, 15, 405–441.
• Blench, Roger (2005a) 'A survey of Dogon languages in Mali: Overview', OGMIOS: Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages, 3.02 (#26), 14-15. (Online version: http://www.ogmios.org/266.htm, Retrieved June 26, 2005).
• Blench, Roger (2005b) 'Baŋgi me, a language of unknown affiliation in Northern Mali', OGMIOS: Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages, 3.02 (#26), 15-16. (report with wordlist)
• Calame-Griaule, Geneviève (1956) Les dialectes Dogon. Africa, 26 (1), 62-72.
• Calame-Griaule, Geneviève (1968) Dictionnaire Dogon Dialecte tɔrɔ: Langue et Civilisation. Paris: Klincksieck: Paris.
• Hochstetler, J. Lee, Durieux, J.A. & E.I.K. Durieux-Boon (2004) Sociolinguistic Survey of the Dogon Language Area. SIL International. online version
• Plungjan, Vladimir Andreevič (1995) Dogon (Languages of the world materials vol. 64). München: LINCOM Europa
• Williamson, Kay & Blench, Roger (2000) 'Niger-Congo', in Heine, Bernd and Nurse, Derek (eds) African Languages - An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, pp. 11—42.

External links

• Guide linguistique dogon, on the French Wikitravel