The Dogon dialects of the western plains below the

Bandiagara Escarpment The Bandiagara Escarpment (, ) is a sandstone cliff in the Dogon country of Mali. It rises about above the lower sandy flats to the south, and has a length of approximately . The area of the escarpment is inhabited today by the Dogon people. ...

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 ...

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mutually intelligible 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 ...

. They are sometimes called the ''Kan'' Dogon because they use the word ''kan'' (also spelled ''kã'') for varieties of speech. The dialects are: *''Tomo kã'' *''Teŋu kã'' *''Togo kã'' The latter two are traditionally subsumed under the name ''Tene kã'' (Tene Kan, Tene Tingi), but Hochstetler separates them because the three varieties are about equidistant. There are a quarter million speakers of these dialects, about evenly split between Tomo Kan and Tene Kan, making this the most populous of the Dogon languages. There are a few Tomo-speaking villages just across the border in Burkina Faso.

Phonology

Consonants

* Consonant germination also occurs frequently among sounds . * can only occur among loanwords. * is interchangeable with . * Consonant sound only rarely occurs and in almost absent. * Consonant sounds are absent, except in loanwords. * can be realized as a fricative between vowel sounds . * Sounds only occur from loanwords, and are interchangeable. * Glottal sound can only occur as an element in some reduplicated forms of vowel-initial words, or between vowels within a word.

Vowels

* In Tomo Kan, an extra central vowel sound is also attested possibly as a result of preceding a nasalised segment or a . It may also regularly be pronounced as as well.

References

* . * {{Dogon topics, state=collapsed Dogon languages Languages of Mali Languages of Burkina Faso