Mende Mɛnde yia
Spoken in:	Sierra Leone, Liberia
Region:	South central Sierra Leone
Total speakers:	1,480,000
Language family:	Niger-Congo  Atlantic-Congo   Mande    Western     Central-Southwestern      Southwestern       Mende-Loma        Mende-Bandi         Mende
Writing system:	Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	men
ISO 639-3:	men
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The Mende language (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken both by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended 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. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... 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. ... Writing systems of the world today. ... 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. ... 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. ... Unicode is an industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in any of the worlds writing systems. ... The Mende are a large West African ethnic group (population approximately 2 million), the mende are primarily found in Sierra Leone, where they make up 30% of the population, but some also live in Liberia. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...

Mende is a tonal language belonging to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. In 1921, Kisimi Kamara invented a syllabary for Mende he called Kikakui ( ). The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an orthography using the Latin alphabet. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... 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. ... Year 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ... A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables, which make up words. ... Kikakui is a syllabary used for writing the Mende language. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ...

It was used thoroughly in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond. This article is about the film dramatization. ... Blood Diamond is an Academy Award-nominated 2006 adventure/drama/thriller film. ...

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Mende
• Bibiliography on Mende
• The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)
• PanAfrican L10n page on Mende, Bandi & Loko