Mande languages in the context of "Atlantic-Congo"

Niger–Congo is a proposed family of languages spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest language family in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. The number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.

The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 600 million people as of 2025. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Lingala, Ewe, Fon, Ga-Dangme, Shona, Sesotho, Xhosa, Zulu, Akan, and Mooré. The most widely spoken by the total number of speakers is Swahili, which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa.

The Mandinka language (Mandinka kaŋo; Ajami: مَانْدِينْكَا كَانْجَوْ; Glottocode: mand1436; ISO 639-3: mnk), also known as the Gambian or Mandingo, is a Mande language spoken by the Mandinka people of northern Guinea-Bissau, the Casamance region of Senegal, and The Gambia where it is one of the principal languages.

Mandinka belongs to the Manding branch of Mande and is similar to Kassonke but with only 5 instead of 7 vowels, due to lacking the ATR distinction. The varieties spoken in the West Northern bank region in the Gambia borders on a pitch accent due to its proximity with non-tonal neighboring languages like Wolof.

The Mandé peoples are a linguistic grouping of those African nations who speak Mande languages. The various Mandé-speaking nations are concentrated in the western regions of West Africa.

The Mandinka or Malinke, a western Mandé nation, are credited with the founding one of the largest West African empires. Other large Mandé-speaking nations include the Soninke and Susu, as well as smaller ones such as the Ligbi, Vai, and Bissa. Mandé-speaking peoples inhabit various environments, from coastal rainforests to the sparse Sahel, and have a wide range of cuisines, cultures, and beliefs.

In most classifications, the Eastern Sudanic languages are a group of nine families of languages that may constitute a branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Eastern Sudanic languages are spoken from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania.

Nubian (and possibly Meroitic) gives Eastern Sudanic some of the earliest written attestations of African languages. However, the largest branch by far is Nilotic, spread by extensive and comparatively recent conquests throughout East Africa. Before the spread of Nilotic, Eastern Sudanic was centered in present-day Sudan. The name "East Sudanic" refers to the eastern part of the region of Sudan where the country of Sudan is located, and contrasts with Central Sudanic and Western Sudanic (modern Mande, in the Niger–Congo family).

The Manding languages (sometimes spelt Manden, and archaically Mandingo) are a dialect continuum within the Niger-Congo family spoken in West Africa. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers – and spoken by around 37 million people in the countries Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Liberia, Ivory Coast and The Gambia. Their best-known members are Mandinka or Mandingo, the principal language of The Gambia; Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of Guinea and Mali; and Jula, a trade language of Ivory Coast and western Burkina Faso. Manding is part of the larger Mandé family of languages.