Siamou, also called Seme, is spoken by about 40,000 people as of 1999, mainly in Burkina Faso's Kenedougou Province around the town of Orodara, with further speakers in Ivory Coast and Mali. It was traditionally classified as a Kru language, but recent scholarship has found it bears little resemblance to Kru, and Glottolog and other major linguistic databases now treat it as a language isolate whose exact position within Niger-Congo, if any, remains uncertain.
Facts
RegionKénédougou Province, Burkina Faso (around Orodara); also spoken in Ivory Coast and Mali 1 Speaker Count1999 figure per the cited source, combining 20,000 in Burkina Faso and 20,000 in Ivory Coast and Mali. Proto-Language StatusTraditionally classified as Kru, but recent scholarship (Blench 2013, Vogler 2015, Guldemann 2018) finds little resemblance to Kru; Glottolog treats it as a language isolate of uncertain Niger-Congo affiliation. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Siamou Language
Wikimedia FoundationGeographical distribution section, sentence 2: Kenedougou villages
In Burkina Faso, it is mainly spoken in the province of Kénédougou, around the provincial capital Orodara
Geographical distribution section, sentence 1: 1999 count
In 1999, it was spoken by 20,000 people in western Burkina Faso and another 20,000 in the Ivory Coast and Mali.
Classification section, sentences 1-2
Siamou is traditionally classed as Kru. However, according to Roger Blench (2013) and Pierre Vogler (2015), the language bears little resemblance to Kru.
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