Garfeen speaking Mandingo

This video was recorded by Peace Corps Volunteer Justin in Liberia. Mandingo, also known as Manya, is a language of the Maninka dialect continuum, which comprises a set of closely related mother tongues spoken by about five million people across West Africa, in Guinea and Mali, where they are officially recognized as a single ‘Maninka language’, as well as in Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Ivory Coast. A Niger-Congo language of the Mande linguistic family, Manya is spoken by ethnically Mandé communities in Liberia. It is most commonly written with a variety of the Latin alphabet, as well as the N’ko script, which was developed in 1949 for Mande languages.