 thumb|right|the historic extent of the bambara people. bambara, also known as bamana, and bamanankan by speakers of the language, is a language spoken in mali, and to a lesser extent burkina faso and senegal, by as many as six million people (including second language users). the bambara language is the language of people of the bambara ethnic group, numbering about 4,000,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca in mali (it is estimated that about 80 percent of the population speak it as a first or second language). it is a subjectâobjectâverb language and has two tones. ==classification== bambara is a language/dialect of the manding language cluster, a cluster of languages whose ethnic-speakers generally trace their cultural history to the medievel empire of manding.http://mandelang.kunstkamera.ru/files/mandelang/mandekan.pdf bambara is classified as part of the larger, very broad mandÃ© group. dialects of manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible &ndash; dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers &ndash; and spoken by 30 to 40 million people in the countries burkina faso, senegal, guinea bissau, guinea, liberia, ivory coast and the gambia.http://www.sil.org/silesr/2000/2000-003/manding/manding.htm ==alphabet and literature== it uses seven vowels  and  (the letters approximate their ipa equivalents). writing began during the french occupation, and the first orthography was introduced in 1967. literacy is limited, especially in rural areas. although written literature is only slowly evolving (due to the predominance of french as the "language of the educated"), there exists a wealth of oral literature, which is often tales of kings and heroes. this oral literature is mainly tradited by the "griots" (jeliw in bambara) who are a mixture of storytellers, praise singers and human history books who have studied the trade of singing and reciting for many years. many of their songs are very old and are said to date back to the old kingdom of mali. ==geographical distribution== bambara is s
Languages_of_Burkina_Faso Languages_of_Ghana Languages_of_Guinea Languages_of_Ivory_Coast Languages_of_Mali Languages_of_Senegal Languages_with_ISO_639-1_code Languages_with_ISO_639-2_code Manding_languages Subjectaobjectaverb_languages