Mende language

Not to be confused with Mende language (Papua New Guinea).

Mende
Mɛnde yia
Spoken in	Sierra Leone, Liberia
Region	South central Sierra Leone
Native speakers	1,480,000  (date missing)
Language family	Niger–Congo ? Mande Western Mande Southwestern Mende–Loma Mende–Bandi Mende–Loko Mende
Writing system	Latin; Kisimi Kamara's Mende syllabary
Language codes
ISO 639-2	men
ISO 639-3	men

Mende (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.

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.

It was used extensively in the movies Amistad and Blood Diamond.

External links

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