Western Plains Dogon

Western Plains Dogon
Kan Dogon
Region	Mali, Burkina Faso
Native speakers	260,000 (1998)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Dogon Plains Western Plains Dogon
Dialects	Tomo Kan Tengu Kan Togo Kan
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Either: dtm – Tomo Kan dtk – Tene Kan
Glottolog	west2508[2]

The Dogon dialects of the western plains below the Bandiagara Escarpment is Mali are mutually intelligible. They are sometimes called the Kan Dogon because they use the word kan (also spelled kã) for varieties of speech. The dialects are:

• Tomo kã
• Teŋu kã
• Togo kã

The latter two are traditionally subsumed under the name Tene kã (Tene Kan, Tene Tingi), but Hochstetler separates them because the three varieties are about equidistant.

There are a quarter million speakers of these dialects, about evenly split between Tomo Kan and Tene Kan, making this the most populous of the Dogon languages. There are a few Tomo-speaking villages just across the border in Burkina Faso.

References

1. Tomo Kan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
   Tene Kan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Western Plains Dogon". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

• Blench, Roger; Mallam Dendo (2005). "A survey of Dogon languages in Mali: Overview". OGMIOS: Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages. 3.02 (26): 14–15. Retrieved 2011-06-30..
• Hochstetler, J. Lee; Durieux, J.A.; E.I.K. Durieux-Boon (2004). Sociolinguistic Survey of the Dogon Language Area (PDF). SIL International. Retrieved 2011-06-30.