Sembla language

Not to be confused with Southern Samo language.

Sembla
Seenku
Region	Burkina Faso
Native speakers	16,000 (2009) [1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Mande Western Northwestern Samogo Sembla
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sos
Glottolog	seek1238

Sembla, Sambla,or Seenku, is a Western Mande language within the Samogo group of Burkina Faso. The northern dialect called Timiku ^[2] and the southern one called Gbeneku ^[3] are easily intelligible.

The language is also known as Samogho and "Southern Samo", which is also the name of one of the Samo languages.

This language also has a complex speech replacement system, which is implemented on the Sambla balafon, where the words of the Sambla language are translated into music, similar to the more famous talking drum communication. ^[4]

Further reading

• McPherson, Laura (2020). "Seenku". Illustrations of the IPA. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 50 (2): 220–239. doi: 10.1017/S0025100318000312 , with supplementary sound recordings.

• McPherson, Laura. "A Grammar of Seenku". Mouton Grammar Library (83). De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110765021. ISBN   978-3-11-061295-0.
• McPherson, Laura (2017). "The morphosyntax of adjectives in Seenku". Mandenkan (57): 25–48. doi:10.4000/mandenkan.1041.
• McPherson, Laura (2017). "Multiple feature affixation in Seenku plural formation". Morpholog (27): 217–252. doi:10.1007/s11525-017-9300-4).
• Prost, André (1971). Éléments de sembla: phonologie, grammaire, lexique (Haute Volta: groupe mandé) (in French). Lyon: Afrique et Langage.

References

1. Sembla at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. spoken around Timi, on modern maps Karankasso
3. spoken around Gbene, on modern maps Bouende
4. McPherson, Laura (2018-06-18). "Musical surrogate languages in the documentation of complex tone: The case of the Sambla balafon". 6th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages (TAL 2018). ISCA. pp. 62–66. doi:10.21437/tal.2018-13. S2CID   52240848.