The Senari languages form a central dialect cluster of the Senufo languages

Senufo languages

The Senufo or Senufic languages comprise ca. 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Côte d'Ivoire, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west of Ghana. The Senufo languages are generally considered a branch of the Gur...

. They are spoken in northern Côte d'Ivoire

Côte d'Ivoire

The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...

, southern Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

 and southwest Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...

 by more than a million Senufo

Senufo

The Senufo are an ethnolinguistic group composed of diverse subgroups of Gur-speaking people living in an area spanning from southern Mali and the extreme western corner of Burkina Faso to Katiola in Côte d'Ivoire. One group, the Nafana, is found in north-western Ghana...

. Four varieties can be distinguished, Cebaara, Nyarafolo, Senara and Syenara, all with several dialects. With 862,000 speakers, Cebaara (Tyembara) is the largest of the four; it is also the central variety, spoken around the traditional Senufo center Korhogo

Korhogo

Korhogo is a town in Korhogo Department in the north-central region of Côte d'Ivoire. It has a population of 174,000 . It produces and/or processes goods such as cotton, kapok, rice, millet, peanuts, corn, yams, sheep, goats and diamonds. The town was on an important pre-colonial trade route to...

. Syenara is spoken north of Cebaara by about 136,500 people. Nyarafolo is spoken by 48,000 in northeast Côte d'Ivoire around Ferkessédougou

Ferkessédougou

Ferkessédougou is the second largest town in northern Côte d'Ivoire. Ferkessédougou is also the administrative seat of the Ferkessédougou Department, one of four Departments in the Savanes Region...

. Senara (50,000 native speakers) of the Laraba Province of Burkina Faso is the outlier of the four; intelligibility testing with Cebaara yields ratings between 42 and 74 per cent (SIL). Within Senufo as a whole, the Senari languages are thought to be most closely related to the Karaboro languages

Karaboro languages

The Karaboro languages are spoken in Burkina Faso by approximately 65 000 people . They belong to the Senufo subfamily, but are separated from other Senufo languages by a small band of unrelated languages. Within Senufo they are thought to be most closely related to the Senari...

.

External links

• The Senari branch on the Ethnologue
  Ethnologue
  Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
  
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• PanAfrican L10n page on Senufo-Senari