Karaboro languages

Karaboro
Geographic distribution	southern Burkina Faso
Linguistic classification	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Senufo Central Karaboro
Subdivisions	Kar (Eastern Karaboro) Syer-Tenyer (Western Karaboro)
Language codes
Glottolog	kara1479
Karaboro, some neighbouring languages and the Senufo language area.

The Karaboro languages are a dialect continuum spoken in Burkina Faso. They belong to the Senufo subfamily, but are geographically separated from other Senufo languages by a small band of unrelated languages. Linguistically, they share phonetic, morphological, and lexical features separate them from other Senufo languages. ^[1] Within Senufo they are thought to be most closely related to the Senari languages.^{[ citation needed ]}

Karaboro is commonly divided into two languages: Syer-Tenyer, or Western Karaboro; and Kar, or Eastern Karaboro. The two languages are closely related but have limited mutual intelligibility. Syer was spoken by an estimated 65,000 people in 2015, often with Jula as their second language. ^[2]

Footnotes

1. Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (July 2015). A grammar of Syer (Western Karaboro, Senufo) : phonology, morphology, argument realization. Köppe. ISBN   978-3-89645-612-0 . Retrieved 15 February 2026.
2. Dakubu, Mary Esther Kropp (1 November 2016). "Review: Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia: A grammar of Syer (Western Karaboro, Senufo); phonology, morphology, argument realization". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 37 (2): 287–294. doi:10.1515/jall-2016-0012. ISSN   1613-3811 . Retrieved 15 February 2026.

Bibliography

• Hook, A., R. Mills and E. Mills (1975). L'Enquête Dialectale Karabora, Société Internationale de Linguistique and University of Ouagadougou.
• Mills, Elizabeth (1984) Senoufo phonology, discourse to syllable (a prosodic approach) SIL publications in linguistics (ISSN 1040-0850), 72.