Eastern Mande languages

Not to be confused with the Volta–Niger languages, a distantly related branch of the Niger–Congo family.

The Eastern Mande languages (called Eastern Eastern Mande by Kastenholz, and Niger–Volta by Schreiber^[1] and also known as the Bisa–Busa languages) are a branch of the Mande languages spoken in seven areas: northwest Burkina Faso, the border region of northern Benin and Nigeria, and one language, Bissa, also spoken in Ghana, Togo, and Ivory Coast and the Samo languages also spoken in Mali.

Eastern Mande
Eastern Eastern Mande
Geographic distribution	Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Mali
Linguistic classification	Niger–Congo? Mande Southeastern Mande Eastern Mande
Subdivisions	Samo–Busa Bissa
Language codes
Glottolog	east2697

Member languages

• Bissa, spoken in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, and Ivory Coast
• Boko of Benin and Nigeria
• Busa of Nigeria and Benin
• Bokobaru of Nigeria
• Samo languages (Sane, San, Sa) of Burkina Faso and Mali
• Shanga, spoken in Nigeria
• Tyenga (Kyenga), spoken in Benin and Nigeria.

Classification

The following internal classification is from Dwyer (1989, 1996), as summarized in Williamson & Blench 2000.^[2]

East Mande	Samo–Busa Samo languages Busa  languages Busa–Boko Shanga–Tyenga Bissa

Vydrin (2009) places San (Samo) with Bisa.^[3]

See also

• Proto-Niger-Volta reconstructions (Wiktionary)