Donno So

Donno So (also called Tomo Kan Dogon) is a Dogon language of the Niger-Congo family, spoken by around 50,000 people in the Mopti region of Mali along the Bandiagara escarpment. The Dogon people are internationally famous for their cliff-dwelling settlements along the 150 km Bandiagara escarpment, their elaborate traditional cosmology (extensively documented by French anthropologist Marcel Griaule in the mid-20th century, though his ethnography is now considered partly fanciful), and their distinctive masked dance traditions for Dama funerary rites. Linguistically, the Dogon family is small and distinctive, with around 13 traditional Dogon languages including Donno So, Toro So, Tommo So, Toro Tegu, Tomo Kan, and Jamsay; the languages are mutually unintelligible despite their geographic proximity. The Dogon languages preserve features of considerable historical-comparative interest, with their position within Niger-Congo still debated.