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The N'Ko
and its SPEAKERS
THE MANDEN TERRITORY
The indeterminate states of the Manden territory are
located between the woodland at the South West and the North West of the
sub-Sahara desert in West Africa. The
populations in this area are predominantly speakers of the N'KO, the
four branches of Mandika, dialects.
The N'KO folk have settled in the
following nine Weste African countries namely Mali, Guinea, Cote
d’Ivoire, Burkina-Faso, the Gambia, Senegal, Guinea Bisau, Sierra Leone
and Liberia. In the republic of Niger and the northern part of Ghana,
frontier to Burkina, there is a group of small ethnic communities of the
Jula, one of the four branches of Mandenkang. In the republic of
Mouritania too there are ethnic groups sharing not only the other
cultural norms but also (Mandenkakang) as their first language used in
everyday communications.
All the areas of Manden where
the speakers of N'ko
are the main settlersbear a special patronymic, name aimed to identify
the collective name of the folk living in certain area. The Southern
part of the Manden traditionally has belonged to the Jula, the Northern
region is inhibit by the Bamana, the West by the Manika and the North
West has been occupied by Kasong and Mandingo
These well-known names of the following dialects;
Maninkakang = languageof Maninka) Bamanakang = Languageof Bamana),
Kasonkakang = (language of Kasongka), Julakang = (language of Jula) and
Tabusikang = (language of Tabusi) have useful
function in the Manden societies not only as an emblem of the dialects
but also as zone and provincial identities.
Those whose maternal dialect is Manikakang, have
believed in the cultural awareness that the Mandinko dialect is a
devising part from Manika, those with the Bamana Dialect as their
maternal language, deducing that both the Jula and Manika dialects were
the offspring of the Bamana dialects which they consider to be the
prototype of all the four branches of the N'KO language.
The peoples, other settlers in the area, who
don’t have any of these tongues (Bamara, Jula, Mandinko and Manika) as a
maternal language, speak N'KO, when they communicate with their Mandenka
neighbours.
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