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Soninke language

Soninke
Sooninkanxanne سࣷونِکَنْخَنّࣹ
Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Ghana, Burkina Faso
West Africa
Soninke
2.3 million (2017–2021)
Niger–Congo?

The Soninke language (Soninke: Sooninkanxanne, سࣷونِکَنْخَنّࣹ), also known as Serakhulle or Azer orMaraka, is a Mande language spoken by the Soninke people of West Africa. The language has an estimated 2.3 million speakers, primarily located in Mali and Mauritania, and also (in order of numerical importance of the communities) in Senegal, Ivory Coast, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. It enjoys the status of a national language in Mauritania, Mali, Senegal and The Gambia.

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
⟨m⟩ m	⟨n⟩ n	⟨ñ⟩ ɲ	⟨ŋ⟩ ŋ
⟨p⟩ p	⟨t⟩ t	⟨c⟩ t͡ʃ	⟨k⟩ k	⟨q⟩ q
⟨b⟩ b	⟨d⟩ d	⟨j⟩ d͡ʒ	⟨g⟩ ɡ
⟨f⟩ f	⟨s⟩ s		⟨x⟩ x ~ χ	⟨h⟩ h
	⟨r⟩ r
⟨w⟩ w	⟨l⟩ l	⟨y⟩ j

	Front	Central
i iː		u uː
e eː		o oː
	a aː

Long vowels are written double: aa, ee, ii, oo, uu.

Dialects of Soninke include the Berber-inflected Azer dialect.

PanAfriL10n page on Soninke
Soninkara.org: La langue soninké
Collection of documents in Soninke
Decree No. 2005-991 of 21 October 2005 relating to the spelling and the separation of words in Soninke via the website of the Senegalese Journal officiel (in French)

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