On this page/Sur cette page... (hide)
This page also includes information on Yalunka / cette page comprend aussi de l'information sur le djalonké
Susu is a Mande language. Ethnologue lists its classification as follows: Niger-Congo, Mande, Western, Central-Southwestern, Central, Susu-Yalunka.
It is spoken mainly in coastal Guinea and northern Sierra Leone. There are small numbers of Susu speakers in Guinea Bissau and of Yalunka speakers in Senegal and Mali.
A map of where Susu is spoken is available at http://gamma.sil.org/silesr/2000/2000-003/Soso.htm
According to Ethnologue:
Although no thorough dialect surveys of Susu have come to our attention, Voegelin and Voegelin (1977) report that the two dialects are virtually indistinguishable. (Webbook)
Ethnologue considers Yalunka as distinct. "Close to Susu, but only marginally intelligible." It also lists two dialects of Yalunka: Sulima, Firia.
Susu is an important regional language of northern Sierra Leone and western Guinea (coastal region). (Webbook)
A Latin based script has been used for Susu since the colonial period. This has undergone some changes and currently includes some extended characters.
Susu was (is?) also written in Arabic script (Ajami).
[Status of Yalunka?]
Susu alphabet as reported by Hartell (1993) and presented in Systèmes alphabétiques: http://sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono/AfficheTableauOrtho2N.php?choixLangue=soso
A sample text is shown on the "Language Museum" site: http://www.language-museum.com/s/susu.htm
Unicode fonts with the following extended ranges should suffice for Susu:
Not aware of any localisation efforts.
Susu
Yalunka (Djalonké)
Chanard, Christian (2006), Systèmes alphabétiques des langues africaines, LLACAN, CNRS, http://sumale.vjf.cnrs.fr/phono/
Dwyer, David (1997), Webbook of African Languages, http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html (page on "Susu (Yalunka)," http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/Susu_root.html )
Hartell, Rhonda L., ed. (1993), The Alphabets of Africa. Dakar: UNESCO and SIL. (The French edition, published the same year, is entitled Alphabets de Langues Africaines).
SIL International, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, "Susu," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=sus
______, "Yalunka," http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=yal
SIL International, "ISO 639 Code Tables," http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp
U.S. Library of Congress, "ISO 639.2: Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages: Alpha-3 codes arranged alphabetically by the English name of language," http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/English_list.php
Wikipedia, "Susu language," http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susu_language
< Suppire, Minianka | Major Languages | Swahili >
