Of the 7000-odd languages spoken around the world today, Africa contains around 2100 languages. The massive continent is a treasure trove of linguistic diversity, with many indigenous languages still spoken vigorously today. Of course, most Africans learn the national lingua franca to facilitate interethnic communications within their country, but the majority nonetheless speak an indigenous language at home and in their local community. One of Africa’s larger indigenous languages is Mandinka, which is spoken by a sizable portion of the Guinean population.
Mandinka, or Malinké, is spoken by around 1.3 million people, which makes it a major language in the highly linguistically diverse continent of Africa. Mandinka speakers may also speak French or English, depending on the lingua franca of their country, given that Mandinka is spoken across several different West African countries. Dialectical diversity in Mandinka is minimal, however, so the language generally remains intelligible among speakers from different countries. Even though Mandinka is a major language in its region, it receives little recognition on the international stage, with hardly any translation services available. The TranslationServices.com Mandinka translation team is here to change that with high-quality Mandinka translation services.
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Learning all about Mandinka
Mandinka occupies the southwestern tip of West Africa, with speakers ranging across Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Liberia. In the Gambia, Mandinka is the most widely spoken native language, with more than 35% of the country speaking it as their first language. When it comes to writing, Mandinka can be written in various scripts—the Latin alphabet is official, but Aijma, a modified version of the Arabic script, is also widely used. In addition, a native pan-Mandinka writing system called N’Ko is quickly gaining prominence, particularly in northeastern Guinea.
Mandinka belongs to the Manda branch of languages, which is part of the larger Niger–Congo language family. One particularly interesting characteristic of Mandinka is its pronoun system, wherein verbal tense information is expressed in the pronoun rather than in the verb itself. If a sentence contains both a subject and object pronoun, they are combined into a single word, with the tense marker wedged between them. In cases without any pronouns, tense particles are placed immediately after the subject, with any indirect objects then coming after, followed by the verb.
We’re here to translate anything you want to or from Mandinka.
Mandinka’s pronoun system may sound complicated, but don’t worry—our Mandinka translators are native speakers, so they’re experts at navigating this tricky grammatical landscape. We proudly serve clients looking for both translation into Mandinka and translation from Mandinka, for a wide range of documents—including tricky applications like historical documents or traditional literature written in Mandinka. We work with content in the Latin, Arabic, and N’Ko scripts as well. For those wishing to translate English content into Mandinka, we’re happy to work with anything from business documents, to educational materials, to digital content like websites, apps, and games. After all, these will help Mandinka speakers usher their language into the digital era and help safeguard it from erosion from the national languages of their respective countries.
If you want Mandinka translation services, all you have to do is message us and let us know what exactly you’re looking for!