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 and Mali, where the closely related Bambara is a national language, and also in Liberia, Senegal,Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire, where it has no official status. The Ethnologue lists the following varieties, but notes that the distinctions between them are largely uncertain: A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... 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. ... Mandé is the name of an ethnic group or nation, as well as a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Dioula, Kagoro, Bozo, Mendé, Yacouba, and Vai. ... Mande (or Manding) is the name of a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka and Bambara. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... The word NKo written in the NKo alphabet NKo is both a script devised by Solomana Kante in 1949 as a writing system for the Mande languages of West Africa, and the name of the literary language itself written in the script. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. ... Manya is a language of West Africa. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... The Unicode Standard, Version 5. ... Mande (or Manding) is the name of a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka and Bambara. ... Mandé is the name of an ethnic group or nation, as well as a group of languages which are spoken in several countries in West Africa, including Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Dioula, Kagoro, Bozo, Mendé, Yacouba, and Vai. ... 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 Malinké are an African Mandé ethnic group. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

• Eastern Maninkakan, also called Malinke or Maninka, spoken by 1,890,000 speakers in Guinea and c.200,000 in Liberia and Sierra Leone;
• Maninka, Konyanka, spoken by 128,000 speakers in Guinea;
• Maninka, Sankaran, also called Faranah, spoken in Guinea;
• Forest Maninka, a part of the Maninka-Mori group together with Wojenaka, Worodougou, Koro, Koyaga, and Mahou, spoken by 15,000 speakers in Côte d'Ivoire.

External links

• Nko script and a literary Maninka language by Valentin Vydrine
• Some text from the language Museum
• Language museum in kankan
• Various links on the Maninka
• Ethnologue report
• Malinke-Bambara Loan Words in the Mayan Languages