Bozo language

Bozo
Bozo
Region	Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast
Ethnicity	Bozo people
Native speakers	230,000 (apart from Tieyaxo) in Mali (2003–2009)
Language family	Mande Western Mande Northwestern Soninke–Bobo Soninke–Bozo Bozo; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Variously:; bzx – Hainyaxo; boo – Tiemacèwè; boz – Tiéyaxo; bze – Jenaama
Glottolog	bozo1252

Bozo (

Mande language spoken by the Bozo people of the Inner Niger Delta in Mali

. For

tonal

, with three lexical tones.

The Bozo cluster is divided into the following varieties:

Hainyaxo (Hainyaho, Kelengaxo, Kɛlɛngaxo) (a few thousand speakers), spoken in Mali [2]^[3]
Tiɛma Cɛwɛ (Tièma cièwè, Tièma cièwe, Tiema ciewe, Tiema cewe, Tiemacèwè, Tiemacewe, Tiema) (2,500 speakers in 1991), spoken in Mali^{[citation needed]}
Tiéyaxo (Tieyaxo, Tigemaxo) (a few thousand speakers), spoken in Mali and Burkina Faso^[4]^[3]
Sorogaama (Jenaama, Sorogama, Sorko) (200,000 speakers in 2005), spoken in Mali, Nigeria and Ivory Coast^{[citation needed]}

Hainyaxo (Kelengaxo), spoken by the Hain (sg. Xan), is the most western dialect, spoken in two spots along the

Lake Debo

). Tiemacewe (Tièma Cièwè) is the northeasternmostern Bozo dialect, spoken in the vicinity of Lake Debo.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, the Jenaama/Sorogama dialect of the Bozo language is usually referred to as Sorko. It is spoken in the Nigerian states of

Lake Kainji

).

Writing system

Bozo alphabet of DNAFLA^[5]
A	B	C	D	E	Ɛ	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	Ɲ	Ŋ	O	Ɔ	P	R	S	T	U	W	X	Y
a	b	c	d	e	ɛ	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	ɲ	ŋ	o	ɔ	p	r	s	t	u	w	x	y

A long vowel is indicated by doubling the letter: ⟨aa, ee, ɛɛ, ii, oo, ɔɔ, uu⟩; nasalization is indicated by following the letter with an n: ⟨an, en, ɛn, in, on, ɔn, un⟩.^[5]

Notes

^ Hainyaxo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Tiemacèwè at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Tiéyaxo at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Jenaama at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ "Welcome to ethologue.com". Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2006-11-27.
^ ^a ^b Ethnologue (15th edition) reports identical speaker counts for both Hainyaho and Tigemaxo: 117,696, from the 1987 census. In the fourteenth edition, this number was noted to be the number of 'all mother tongue Boso speakers'. In the light of the 200,000 reported speakers of Sorogama, by far the most widely spoken Bozo variety, speaker numbers for Hainyaho and Tigemaxo are put at 'a few thousand' here.
^ "Ethnologue 14 report for language code:BOZ". Archived from the original on 2006-05-14. Retrieved 2005-09-15.
^ ^a ^b DNAFLA 1993.