السنوفو سوبيري

Senoufo Supyire (Suppire, "the Senufo speech") is the principal Senufo language of southwestern Mali, spoken across the Sikasso Region by ~750,000 Senufo (Suppire-speaking subgroup). The Senufo cluster (Supyire, Mamara, Sicite, Tagbana, Cebaara, etc. — ~3M total speakers across Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire) is one of the smallest branches of Atlantic-Congo, with internal mutual intelligibility limited despite ethnic unity. Famous for the Senufo "balafon" (West African xylophone) musical tradition and elaborate masked ritual society (Poro). Linguistically, Senufo shows Atlantic-Congo Bantu-like noun-class system (~6 classes), tonal (3 tones with downstep), and SOV constituent order. The Carlson 1994 reference grammar is a seminal work in Senufo linguistics.