The Senari languages form a central dialect cluster of the
Senufo languages
The Senufo or Senufic languages (''Senoufo'' in French) has around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west o ...
. They are spoken in northern
Ivory Coast, southern
Mali
Mali (; ), officially the Republic of Mali,, , ff, 𞤈𞤫𞤲𞥆𞤣𞤢𞥄𞤲𞤣𞤭 𞤃𞤢𞥄𞤤𞤭, Renndaandi Maali, italics=no, ar, جمهورية مالي, Jumhūriyyāt Mālī is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mal ...
and southwest
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to ...
by more than a million
Senufo. Three varieties can be distinguished,
*
Cebaara (Tyebaala)
*
Senara
*
Nyarafolo,
all with several dialects. With 860,000 speakers, Cebaara (Tyembara) is the largest of the four; it is also the central variety, spoken around the traditional Senufo center
Korhogo
Korhogo is a city in northern Ivory Coast. It is the seat of both Savanes District and Poro Region. It is also a commune and the seat of and a sub-prefecture of Korhogo Department. In the 2014 census, the city had a population of 243,048, maki ...
. Senara (190,000 native speakers) of the Laraba Province of Burkina Faso is a geographic outlier; intelligibility testing with Cebaara yields ratings between 42 and 74 per cent (SIL). Nyarafolo is spoken by 50,000 in northeast Ivory Coast around
Ferkessédougou; ''Ethnologue'' reports a classification as Tagwana-Djimini rather than Senari. Within Senufo as a whole, the Senari languages are thought to be most closely related to the
Karaboro languages
The Karaboro languages are spoken in Burkina Faso by approximately 65,000 people (SIL 1995/1991). They belong to the Senufo subfamily, but are separated from other Senufo languages by a small band of unrelated languages. Within Senufo they are th ...
.
References
External links
PanAfrican L10n page on Senufo-Senari
Senufo languages
{{senufo-lang-stub