Koyraboro Senni

Koyraboro Senni
Native to Mali
Region East of Timbuktu, Gao
Ethnicity 850,000 (2007?)[1]
Native speakers
430,000 (2007)[2]
300,000 monolingual (2007)[2]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 ses
Glottolog koyr1242[3]

Location of Songhay languages[4]

Northwest Songhay:

  Tagdal

Eastern Songhay:

  Koyraboro Senni
  Dendi

Koyraboro Senni (or Eastern Songhay, or Koroboro Senni, or Koyra Senni) is a member of the Songhay languages of Mali and is spoken by some 400,000 people along Niger River from Gourma-Rharous, east of Timbuktu, through Bourem, Gao, and Ansongo to the MaliNiger border.

The expression "koyra-boro senn-i" denotes "the language of the town dwellers" as opposed to nomads like the Tuareg people and other transhumant people.

Although Koyraboro Senni is associated with settled towns, it is a cosmopolitan language which has spread east and west of Gao, to the Fulani or Fula people living at the Mali–Niger border and to the Bozo people of the Niger River. East of Timbuktu, Koyra Senni gives way relatively abruptly to the closely related Koyra Chiini.

References

External links

  1. Koyraboro Senni at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009)
  2. 1 2 Koyraboro Senni at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  3. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Koyraboro Senni Songhai". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
  4. This map is based on classification from Glottolog and data from Ethnologue.
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