Mende language

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Region:	{ Regions of the World Antarctica | East Asia | Central Asia | Southeast Asia | South Asia | North Asia | Middle East | Levant | Arabia | North Africa | Central Africa | Great Lakes | Congo | Guinea | Sahel | Sudan | West Africa | East Africa | Southern Africa | North America | Great Plains | Central America | Caribbean | Andean States | Eastern South America | Northern South America | Western Europe | Eastern Europe | Northern Europe | Scandinavia | Southern Europe | Central Europe | Balkans | Australasia or Australia | Micronesia | Melanesia | Polynesia (For more, visit subcontinent and subregion) }
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The Mende language 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. Mende belongs to the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo language family. In 1921, Kisimi Kamala invented a syllabary for Mende he called Ki-ka-ku. The script achieved widespread use for a time but has largely been replaced with an orthography using the Latin alphabet.

External links

• Ethnologue entry for Mende
• Bibiliography on Mende
• The Mende syllabary (Omniglot)

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