Loko, or Landogo, is a
Southwestern Mande
Mande may refer to:
* Mandé peoples of western Africa
* Mande languages, their Niger-Congo languages
* Manding languages, Manding, a term covering a subgroup of Mande peoples, and sometimes used for one of them, Mandinka people, Mandinka
* Garo p ...
language spoken by the
Loko people
The Loko ( IPA: Lɔkɔ) are one of the indigenous ethnic groups in Sierra Leone. Landogo is used as an endonym for the people and language, but other groups refer to them as Loko. They speak a Southwestern Mande language that is also calle ...
, who primarily live in
Northern Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...
. There are two known
dialects
A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...
, ''Landogo'' and ''Logo'', which are mutually intelligible. Ethnic Loko outnumber native Loko speakers due to the
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
encroachment of
Temne and
Krio and urbanization to
Freetown
Freetown () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, e ...
, where Loko is internally and externally seen as a
low-prestige language.
[Speed, Clarke Karney. Swears and Swearing Among Landogo of Sierra Leone: Aesthetics, Adjudication, and the Philosophy of Power. University of Washington, 1991.]
Citations
References
*Kimball, Les. 1983. A description of the grammar of Loko. Freetown. Institute for Sierra Leonean Languages.
*Innes, Gordon. 1964. An outline grammar of Loko with texts. African Language Studies, pp. 115-178.
Languages of Sierra Leone
Mande languages
Loko people
Endangered languages of Africa
{{Mande-lang-stub