Koyra Chiini (, figuratively "town language"), or Western Songhay, is a member of the

Songhay languages The Songhay, Songhai or Ayneha languages (, or ) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centred on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the West African countries of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. In particular, ...

spoken in

Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...

by about 200,000 people (in 1999) along the

Niger River The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mali, Nige ...

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; ; Koyra Chiini: ; ) is an ancient city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. It is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali, having a population of 32,460 in the 2018 census. ...

and upriver from it in the towns of

Diré Diré is a town and commune on the left bank of the Niger River in the Tombouctou Region of Mali. In the 2009 census the population of the commune was 22,365. The town is the administrative center of the Diré Cercle. There are several langu ...

Tonka Tonka is an American brand and former manufacturer of toy trucks. The company was founded in 1946 and operated as an independent manufacturer of popular steel toy construction type trucks and machinery, until its sale to Hasbro in 1991. Histor ...

Goundam Goundam is a commune and town in north central Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The cou ...

and

Niafunké Niafunké is a small town on the Niger River in central Mali. The town is the administrative center (''chef-lieu An administrative centre is a seat of regional administration or local government, or a county town, or the place where the centr ...

as well as in the

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

n town of

Araouane Araouane or Arawan is a small village in the Malian part of the Sahara Desert, lying north of Timbuktu on the caravan route to the salt-mining centre of Taoudenni. The village once served as an entrepôt in the trans-Saharan trade. History Be ...

to its north. In this area, Koyra Chiini is the dominant language and the ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

'', although minorities speaking

Hassaniya Arabic Hassaniya Arabic (; also known as , , , , and Maure) is a variety of Maghrebi Arabic spoken by Mauritanian Arabs, Malian Arabs and the Sahrawis. It was spoken by the Beni Ḥassān Bedouin tribes of Yemeni origin who extended their authority o ...

Tamasheq Tamashek or Tamasheq is a variety of Tuareg, a Berber macro-language widely spoken by nomadic tribes across North and West Africa in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Tamasheq is one of the three main varieties of Tuareg, the others bei ...

and

Fulfulde Fula ( ),Laurie Bauer, 2007, ''The Linguistics Student's Handbook'', Edinburgh also known as Fulani ( ) or Fulah (, , ; Adlam: , , ; Ajami: , , ), is a Senegambian language spoken by around 36.8 million people as a set of various diale ...

are found. Djenné Chiini , the dialect spoken in

Djenné Djenné (; also known as Djénné, Jenné, and Jenne) is a Songhai people, Songhai town and Communes of Mali, urban commune in the Inland Niger Delta region of central Mali. The town is the administrative centre of the Djenné Cercle, one of the ...

, is

mutually comprehensible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

, but has noticeable differences, in particular two extra vowels ( and ) and syntactic differences related to

focalisation In narratology, focalisation is the restricted perspective through which a narrative is presented. Coined by French narrative theorist Gérard Genette, his definition distinguishes between ''internal'' focalisation ( first-person) and ''external' ...

. East of Timbuktu, Koyra Chiini gives way relatively abruptly to another Songhay language,

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

. Unlike most Songhai languages, Koyra Chiini has no phonemic tones and has subject–verb–object word order rather than subject–object–verb. It has changed the original Songhay ''z'' to ''j''.

Phonology

All vowels have lengthened counterparts.

Orthography

Table below illustrates the Latin alphabet for Koyra Chiini in Mali, as standardized by "DNAFLA". Table below illustrates the Arabic (Ajami) alphabet for Koyra Chiini, based on UNESCO.BREDA report on standardization of Arabic script in published in 1987 in

Bamako Bamako is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mali, with a 2022 population of 4,227,569. It is located on the Niger River, near the rapids that divide the upper and middle Niger valleys in the southwestern part of the country. Bamak ...

.Chtatou, M. (1992). Using Arabic script in writing the languages of the peoples of Muslim africa. Institute of African Studies

/ref>

Sample text

Below is a sample text, a portion of a monologue recorded in

in 1986. It describes the 1840 battle of Toya in which Tuaregs defeated a force from the Fula "Empire" which had its capital in

Hamdullahi Hamdullahi (; also ''Hamdallahi'' or ''Hamdallaye''. From the Arabic: ''Praise to God'') is a town in the Mopti Region of Mali. In the 19th century, it was the capital of the Fula empire of Massina. Founded around 1820 by Seku Amadu. On March ...

.Heath, Jeffrey: ''A grammar of Koyra Chiini: the songhay of Timbuktu''. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1998 (Mouton grammar library ; 19) ISBN 3-11-016285-7

References

* ed. Jeffrey Heath, Wilhelm J. Möhlig, 1998. ''Texts in Koyra Chiini Songhay of Timbuktu, Mali''. Ruediger Koeppe. . * Jeffrey Heath, ''Dictionnaire Songhay-Anglais-Français: Tome 1 - Koyra Chiini, ou "songhay de Tombouctou", Tome 2 - Djenné Chiini, ou "songhay de Djenné"''. L'Harmattan:Paris 1998. . Songhay languages Languages of Mali Non-tonal languages in tonal families Subject–verb–object languages Long stubs with short prose {{ns-lang-stub