The Mandinka Tribe Linguistic History
The peoples of Upper Guinea belong to three main language subgroupings of the Niger-Congo family: Mande or Mandinka tribe, West Atlantic and Kwa. But we will focus on the Mande for now.
It is estimated that approximately twenty-five different languages belong to the Mande language family. Mande is spoken in a region that runs from Busa in Nigeria to The Gambia in the west, and from Soninke in the north to Vai-Kono in the south. The position of Bobo-Fing (Sya) in Burkina Faso within the Mande subgrouping is somewhat of a mystery, since all other Mande languages may be roughly divided into two groups: the northern or north-western and the southern.
Bobo-Fing (Sya) is spoken in Burkina Faso (or south-eastern). It is easy to discern the relative degrees of connection between a large number of unique languages. Languages such as Mende, Kpelle, and Loma, which are spoken in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, belong to the southwest subgroup of the north-western division. On the other hand, the northern subgroup of the same division encompasses Soninke, Mandenka (including Bambara, Malinka, Dyula, and other related languages), Soso-Yalunke, Vai-Kono, and a few other related languages.
It was previously thought that the southern division consisted of two distinct subgroupings: the southern one, which included Mano and a few other smaller languages spoken in Liberia and the Ivory Coast; and the eastern one, which included a number of small isolated languages spoken in Burkina Faso, northern Benin, and western Nigeria. However, it has since been determined that both of these subgroups are closely related to one another and, as a result, only make up a single group.
There are three distinguishing characteristics that are unique to the Mandenka subgroup, which is a subgroup of a subgroup of the Mande. These characteristics include a huge number of speakers, widespread geographical distribution, and a somewhat cohesive group. The region that speaks Mande was the center of the early governments that emerged in Western Sudan. The Ghana empire, which was among the earliest of these states, dates back more than a thousand years.
According to an oral story, the Mande people expanded their territory into what is now The Gambia was established during the reign of Sundiata in the thirteenth century, and the trade colonies to the south date back to the fourteenth century, if not earlier. The Gambia was named for the river that runs across the country. There are a number of possible historical causes for the geographical distribution of people who speak Mande. It was long believed that the ancestral home of all Mande people was located in the Upper Senegal-Niger region in what is now the country of Mali.
This was due to the fact that the majority of Mande people are represented by just one group, the Mandenka. Furthermore, it was reasoned that all of the other people who speak Mande are offshoots of consecutive waves of migration that originated from the original center. It would appear that this was the case with later population movements, often referred to as the “second Mande dispersal,” which were primarily aimed toward the south and west.
On the other hand, it is possible to hypothesize that the Mande (or proto-Mande) started their migratory movements from a prehistoric home somewhere in the vicinity of Lake Chad, and that after crossing the Niger River, they continued in a general direction that was either westward or south-westward. These migrations had to take place before those of the people who spoke Gur (Voltaic) and the Kwa language. Oral histories passed down in the Bisa (Busanse) and Mosi-Dagomba states indicate that the Bisa inhabited their current territories for a significant amount of time prior to the establishment of the Mosi-Dagomba states.
Traditions held by the Busa people in Nigeria describe their ancestors as having originated in the east. All of this points to the fact that the people who speak Mande and now live in Burkina Faso, Benin, and Nigeria are not the easternmost offshoots of a Mande expansion that began in the west; rather, they are the remnants of southern Mande migrations that went from east to south-west, as indicated by their close linguistic relationship.
Weimers suggested that the Mande languages represent the earliest break-off from the Niger-Congo family, placing this divergence at around 3300; the split between southern and northern-western Mande would have occurred around 16oo. In terms of the chronological framework, Weimers suggested that the Niger-Congo languages represent the earliest break-off from the family. However, given that these dates are derived from glottochronology, a field whose methodologies are increasingly drawing their of many linguists, they must be taken with the utmost caution if they are to be considered reliable.
The fact that sections of Liberia and Ivory Coast were already occupied by people who spoke Mande languages belonging to the southern division during the time period covered by this volume is, on the other hand, beyond reasonable question. Other Mande peoples, such as the Vai, Kono, Mende, Soso, Kpelle/Guerze, Loma/Toma, etc., have migrated coastwards in many waves only during the past five or six centuries. Other Mande peoples include the Vai.
Also Read: Who are the Mandinka: The Great History Of the Mandinka/Mandingo People
