Mende

Mende is a Mande language spoken in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

See it on the globe Open in the family tree

Mende · 7.9°N 11.0°W

Mende (Mɛnde yia) is a major language of Sierra Leone, with some speakers in neighboring Liberia and Guinea. It is spoken by the Mende people and by other ethnic groups as a regional lingua franca in southern Sierra Leone.

Mende is a tonal language belonging to the Mande language family. Early systematic descriptions of Mende were by F. W. Migeod and Kenneth Crosby. Ethel Aginsky decoded the language in her doctoral work.

From Wikipedia · Mende language · CC BY-SA 4.0

Written down

Numuvuisia Kpɛlɛɛ ta ti le tɛ yɛ nduwɔ ya hu, tao ti nuvuu yei kɛɛ ti lɔnyi maa hɛwungɔ. Kiiya kɛɛ hindaluahu gɔɔla a yɛlɔ ti hun. Fale mahoungɔ ti ti nyɔnyɔhu hoi kia ndeegaa.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in Unicode).

Words in Mende

Meaning	Word	Romanization
name	nda*
eye	ngama*
ear	ngoli*
nose	hokpa*
tooth	ngongou*
tongue	na*
hand	toko*
blood	Nama*
bone	kala*
skin	kolo*
knee	ngombi*
water	nja
fire	ngombu*
sun	folo*
stone	kotu*
tree	ngulu*
night	kpindi*
dog	ngílà
fish	nye
one	yila*
two	fele*
I	5a*
you	bia*
we	mua*
drink	kpole*
see	to*
hear	mani*
die	ha*
come	wa*
path	pele*