Escarpment Dogon is a continuum of Dogon dialects of the Bandiagara Escarpment, including the standard language. There are three principal dialects: *Toro So ''Tɔrɔ sɔɔ'', called ''Bomu Tegu'' in the plains languages and also known as ''Dɔgɔsɔ'', is the standard variety of Dogon, which is one of thirteen official languages of

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. Ma ...

. *Tommo So ''

Tɔmmɔ sɔ Tommo So is a language spoken in the eastern part of Mali's Mopti Region. It is placed under the Dogon language family, a subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family. There are approximately 60,000 speakers of Tommo So. Of the twelve Dogon la ...

'', called ''Tombo so'' by

Bondum Dom The Bondum language, ''Bondum Dom'', is a Dogon language spoken in Mali. It is closest to Dogul Dogon The Dogul language, ''Dogul Dom'', is a Dogon language spoken in Mali. It is closest to Bondum Dogon The Bondum language, ''Bondum Dom'', is ...

speakers, is spoken in a region from Kasa to Bandiagara. It is more linguistically conservative than Toro So. The third dialect commonly listed is two subdialects without a common name: *Donno So ''Donno sɔ'' in the Bandiagara area, and *Kamma So ''Kamma sɔ'' also known as ''Kamba So'', in the Kamba area. Hochstetler confirms that these are intelligible with each other, but not with the more populous varieties of Dogon on the neighboring plains. While Toro So was chosen as the official standard, because it has the most in common with the largest number of Dogon languages due to its central location, and is used in educational and official contexts, Jamsay Dogon is the

prestige variety In sociolinguistics, prestige is the level of regard normally accorded a specific language or dialect within a speech community, relative to other languages or dialects. Prestige varieties are language or dialect families which are generally con ...

and is the variety used for radio broadcasts.

Phonology

Consonants

* occurs, but only marginally. * can be realized as a fricative between vowel sounds . * can only occur among loanwords. * might occur as an allophone of when preceding .

Vowels

Tommo So

Tommo So (a bipartite name for the language signifying the ethnicity or the location of the speakers, 'Tommo' and a word for language, 'So') is part of the Dogon language family comprising around twenty languages. The genetic relations of the languages of the Dogon country are complex, as geographical proximity does not necessarily involve genetic relation. "Despite the fact that Tommo So and Dogulu Dom are both spoken in the central area of Dogon country, the preliminary results of our current fieldwork suggest that Tommo So bears a closer relation to Najamba or Donno So."

Geographic distribution

Tommo sɔ is thought to be spoken on the plateau between Douentza and Bandiagara by an estimated 40,000-60,000 people. In terms of neighboring languages, Tommo so is bordered by Najamba-Kidinge to the northwest, by Nanga and Jamsay to the east, by Tiranige Diga to the west, and by Donno So and

Dogulu Dom The Dogul language, ''Dogul Dom'', is a Dogon language The Dogon languages are a small closely-related language family that is spoken by the Dogon people of Mali and may belong to the proposed Niger–Congo family. There are about 600,000 spea ...

to the south. Some dialects of Tommo So and Donno So are mutually intelligible. Donno So, based on fieldwork data, resembles an intermediate step between Tommo So and Toro So.

Notes

References

* . * *

External links

*
Tommo So folk songs
Youtube. 2013-21-07. {{Dogon topics, state=collapsed Dogon languages Languages of Mali